SPHS Grad Jon Garvey’s One-Year Journey From Beginner To College Athlete

I was in probably 10 or 11 sports seasons throughout all of high school, and cheer was by far my favorite part of high school. I wish, if I could go back to freshman year, that I started then because … instead of one cheer season, I would have had eight.”

Jon Garvey

One athlete on the Severna Park High School (SPHS) cheer team is now heading to Division 1 cheer at Clemson University in South Carolina after only starting the sport this past year. His name is Jon Garvey.

Garvey’s rapid rise from beginner to standout high school and now college athlete wasn’t easy. As he fell in love with the raw, physical challenges of cheerleading and the kindness of the close-knit team, he also came face to face with the stigma surrounding cheerleading. Yet, the more passionate he became about the sport, the more his view of it changed. Now, this dedicated college athlete urges anyone on the fence about cheer to try it.

Before Garvey began cheering, he was a football player. For all four years of high school, he played on the Falcons football team with mild interest. Although Garvey was a great asset to the team, his favorite part of football wasn’t the game, but the conditioning. To stay in shape for football, he tumbled and quickly found that he enjoyed it more than playing football. After this discovery, he tried out for SPHS’ cheer team, which uses a lot of tumbling skills. Once on the team, however, Garvey felt nervous about doing cheer, thinking that “this might be socially challenging.”

Part of why Garvey initially believed this was because of the perception some people have of cheer. Garvey said, “(The) first impression for just any high-schooler is like, ‘Oh, it’s just these cute girls dancing around on the field.’”

For some people, including Garvey at first, there is a common misconception that cheer is a less athletic sport or more focused on appearance rather than physical ability. When Garvey tried it, though, he found it far harder than he anticipated.

“It’s the best athletes (who do cheer), in my opinion, (because) you need to be the master of your own body,” he said.

Garvey explained the physical demands put on male cheer athletes who have three roles in the sport: dancing, tumbling and stunting. Tumbling includes backflips, cartwheels or anything usually done in ground gymnastics while stunting is lifting girls up into the air with only brute strength. Garvey said that in tumbling or stunting, “you are putting your body on the line” since stunting requires an athlete to throw cheerleaders 10 to 15 feet in the air and then catch them without making a single mistake, while tumbling requires superb physical control and awareness to prevent personal injury during stunts. While cheer can be dangerous, Garvey loves the challenge of the sport, as does the rest of his team.

This shared goal for excellence in performance turns what would be an average sports team into a real family. He explained that in the hard work, sweat and tears, he and his teammates are “all in it together … and we are all working toward the same goal.” The companionship Garvey feels with his team even extends to his coaches. He reported that while he had worked under many coaches for different sports, the cheer coaches “are the most caring and personal,” and that “they care about you so much, and because of that, we performed really well. I mean, we were fifth in the state!”

Garvey thinks that his team could have possibly landed even higher in the state because of the training the SPHS coaches provide. While the team always scores well, “our scores don’t reflect what we do … because when we’re on the mats in the arena, we’re really pushing boundaries,” he said.

In high school cheer, there are a limited number of allowed stunts, and due to the risk of injury, many of the most challenging stunts are not permitted in competition. Teams that do these stunts, even if they land them perfectly, get points deducted. However, while this may be the case, the SPHS cheer team chooses to push boundaries by performing college-level stunts even at the risk of a reduced score.

This is why, while SPHS officially landed fifth in the state, Garvey believes they could have placed higher if the scoring were different, but he also wouldn’t have it any other way. He said, “We’re not coming in first or second, but we’re the crowd favorites, and if you come to a competition, you will absolutely see that.”

The stunts SPHS pulls and lands go beyond what is expected for any high school cheer team, and Garvey said that the team has and will continue to “go past what the judges think we can do.”

As Garvey looks forward to college, cheering at Clemson, and hopefully later at the Naval Academy through a civilian prep program, he not only feels prepared for the challenges, but his coaches think he’s ready, too. Assistant SPHS cheer coach and active Ravens cheerleader Chris Riley said, “[Garvey] is going to go into college far more prepared than most cheer athletes. Jon has the discipline, the ability to learn, and the background of skills necessary to be a cheerleading star one day.”

Reflecting on his time in cheer so far, Garvey said that he has only one regret: that he didn’t start sooner. “I was in probably 10 or 11 sports seasons throughout all of high school,” he said, “and cheer was by far my favorite part of high school. I wish, if I could go back to freshman year, that I started then because … instead of one cheer season, I would have had eight.”

From Garvey’s amazing experience in cheer, he offered advice to anyone considering trying out the sport: “Absolutely try it. It will be the best experience you will ever have.”

He had one final message for his high school cheer team and a warning for his high school competitors. “Severna Park is coming for first next year!” he said.