Built on belief, discipline, and heart, a Panhandle cheer program gives young athletes a place to grow – on the mat and far beyond it.
MARK KESZLER
Nspire Today! Feature Writer
GERING — On any given evening, long after the school day has ended and dinner dishes are cleared away, the doors to a local gymnastics gym open to a familiar rhythm. Backpacks drop along the wall. Shoes line up neatly. Ponytails are pulled tight. A few nervous laughs echo across the mat before a coach’s voice cuts gently — but firmly — through the room.
This is the nightly cadence of Extreme Cheer, a community-based cheer and athletic training program serving youth ages 4 through 20 from across the Wyoming–Nebraska Panhandle. To the casual observer, it might look like a standard cheer practice. But to the athletes who step onto the mat — and the families who watch them grow — Extreme Cheer has become something much more than that.
It is a place where shy children find their voices.
Where discipline is taught through care, not fear.
Where effort matters as much as ability.
And where belief — steady, patient belief — has room to take root.
Extreme Cheer did not begin with a business plan or a pursuit of trophies. It began with lived experience.
“I started cheer in eighth grade,” said Mari Blanco, the program’s founder and head coach. “I’m originally from Torrington, Wyoming, and there were just more opportunities there than there is in Nebraska — especially for recreational cheer and all-star cheer.”
That difference stayed with her.
Growing up, cheer was more than an activity. It was structure. It was identity. It was refuge.
And as Mari moved into coaching, she began to see something clearly missing in the region she now called home.
“I wanted to create something more community-based,” she said. “That way there wasn’t pressure in high school.”
You can read the entire story in the Nspiring Youth section of the February issue of Nspire Today! magazine. A one-year subscription (12 issues) to Nspire Today! is only $25. You may sign up for a subscription by sending $25 to Nspire Today!, P.O. Box 454, Scottsbluff, NE 69363, or you may pay with a credit card by calling 308-220-8907.
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