Head coaches Sofia Posten and Stephanie McClellan introduced a brand-new sport to Tracy High on Sept. 11th, claiming that it will help athletes improve their athletic abilities and will also be given college opportunities.  

“It is one of the fastest growing female sports right now,” Posten explained, “It’s a part of the NCAA and a great opportunity for athletes to try something new or continue something that can benefit them for college opportunities.” 

Stunt is the fastest growing female sport in the country, and it is similar to cheering and dancing but a lot more competitive and time consuming.   

Stunt is a sport derived from traditional cheerleading. Unlike cheerleading, stunts exclude the crowd-leading and dance elements and only focus on athletic skills. 

Coach McClellan says she will prepare students with no prior stunt experience by seeing where they are and working them up from there.  

“So, we basically just kind of start from the base line and kind of build ‘em up.” McClellan stated, “So, we’ll start with the small scales like we do in any sport. We’ll start from basic skills and then we’ll kind of advance from there.”  

Coach McClellan also revealed that the introduction of the sport came to Tracy High smoother than expected, thanks to existing connections in the cheer community. 

“It actually wasn’t very hard,” McClellan noted. “A lot of the contacts we have for cheer are very familiar in the sport of stunt. And so reaching out to those contacts, they were able to get us in contact with the right people, and it kind of went from there.”  

As a part of the competitive aspect, athletes will be expecting late night practices and trips to compete with other schools. 

The sport has been recognized nationwide by the NCAA as an emerging sport for women, with 300 high schools and 50 colleges already fielding teams.  

Try-outs will occur quite early in November, with Tracy’s first official stunt season launching this spring.