I've raised £40000 to help fund Birkenhead Comets costs for the cheerleading World Championships in Florida in 2024
Organised by Birkenhead Comets
Story
In May 2023, a team from Birkenhead Comets Cheer qualified for the All Star World Championships in Orlando, Florida in April 2024. A team of 22 athletes and 3 coaches will be travelling out there to represent not just Birkenhead, but the larger Liverpool City Region. The team competing is made up of 22 athletes aged 9-14, and includes 2 Ukrainian refugees who have been training and competing with them for the past year, since they were forced to leave their homes due to the Russian invasion of their country.
Birkenhead Comets Cheer is a not-for-profit sports club, run by volunteer coaches in the centre of Birkenhead. In 2021 we moved into our own premises dedicated to cheerleading and tumbling and we now currently have over 60 girls, ages 5-18 participating in one way or another during the week. We aim to keep the costs down to make it as affordable as possible as sporting activities often price families out of being able to participate, and we are really keen to enable as many girls as possible to enjoy the sport. In the cheerleading world we are a very small club but we stand up on the national stage, usually placing top 3 if not winning in the divisions we compete.
The costs to attend the All Star World’s Championships are prohibitive for a lot of our families, and so we are undertaking a large amount of fundraising to enable all the athletes to attend. We do not want participation to be limited by their socio-economic background, and as the athletes earned their place by coming top 3 in a competition of over 150
other teams, we want to help in every way we can. The cost of the trip is £2000 per person, with 22 athletes and 3 coaches that gives us a target amount of £50,000 to raise. All of the athletes are so excited to represent not only their club but the Liverpool City Region and the UK as a whole in what will be an opportunity of a lifetime for them.
Our Ukrainian Athletes
Yaroslava and Antonina are 2 of our athletes who came to the UK after the Russian invasion of their home country. They joined our club barely being able to speak any English and never having done any cheerleading or gymnastics in the past.
"On the 24th February our life was separated into two parts: before and after. Before we had a confident, planned and independent life. At 5am on the 24th of February our life changed at all. We woke up because there were strange loud noises, later we realised they were explosions. We grabbed our children and decided to leave Kyiv. It was the worst and longest day in our life. It took 24 hours to reach our destination in the west of Ukraine, the whole family was exhausted and frightened. We spent some time there, however, sirens and rocket arrivals continued and finally we decided to give our children a safe and quiet life in the UK” - Emiliia Zapolova, Antonina’s mother.
The girls joined the club at separate times, Yaroslava first and then Antonina, and it has been wonderful to see them blossom over the past 15 months. During that time the club sponsored their training fees, and when they made the competitive squad the club provided them with a free uniform to compete in, and the head coach paid personally for their competition entry fees. It is so hard to leave your home country and start in a new one where you cannot even speak the language. We felt it was important to provide them with a consistent place where they could come and make friends and enjoy themselves as children, without the worry of money and how to pay for it hanging over them.
“Yaroslava is a very active girl and she loves sports. Unfortunately, for several months she did not have the opportunity to do anything, but when we came to England our sponsors found cheerleading for her. She was afraid to go there because she did not know the language at all and had never done anything like that, but the coach helped her get comfortable. During the year she has learnt lots of acrobatic stunts and she is making great progress with learning the language. She loves training and never misses them, it’s incredible to see how this makes her happy.” - Oksana Medeve, Yaroslava’s mother.
Whilst the cost for our UK athletes is prohibitive, it is impossible for our Ukrainian athletes. We are desperately seeking sponsorship and donations to cover their costs as there is no way that their mothers could find even a fraction of it. In addition they will need support for living costs whilst in America, as just eating a meal in Orlando is extremely expensive.
