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"The Twinkles: Chasing perfection" - Cheer documentary. Meet The Twinkles. They are competitive cheerleading's elite. This group of 8-12 year-old girls compete at the highest level for their age group. They mix tumbling, modern cheerleading and precise choreography to create a mind-blowing two-and-a-half minute routine that seems impossible for athletes this age. Follow them through the season - as routines are built and re-built, as they balance a grueling schedule with family life, as The Twinkles chase perfection.

Valerie Lipkus shakes her hands in front of her face, unnerved by the pale color they have turned. She stares through the window at the unfolding disaster.
Her daughter has just been replaced during a stunt at cheerleading practice.

"Is she not on the team anymore?" Lipkus asks no one in particular. "She’s just standing there. I feel so bad for my kid. Why is that girl in Andrea’s spot?

"I need a drink. I feel sick to my stomach."

Andrea, then 9, moves to the side of the blue mat, her eyes following the golden curls of her replacement as the girl flies into the safety of her teammates’ arms.

With the stunt over, Andrea twirls around, dancing to a song inside her head.

"She’s doing that," Lipkus says, "so she doesn’t have a meltdown."

In 30 seconds, the crisis will be averted. Lipkus will resume breathing normally and Andrea will reclaim her featured spot on the Twinkles — arguably the most talented group of youth all-star cheerleaders in the country and a traveling circus of pre-teen drama, energy and anxiety.

The team’s stars and supporting cast are worthy of their own reality TV series, performing in a high-stakes and little-known world where parents are kept behind soundproof glass at practice, and where every girl is one bad fall from the hospital or worse — Twinkle irrelevance.

"If I didn’t do cheerleading I’d probably, like, die," Andrea says. "This is my life."

The Twinkles, ages 8 through 12, train at the World Cup All Stars Gym in Freehold, where they are redefining what it means to be a cheerleader. Forget right now about what you see on the sidelines at football games. This is cheerleading as a high-flying sport whose soaring participants work like professionals, often devoting six or seven days every week to training.

They attend formal practice on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, take private lessons and flock to the gym for open tumbling sessions. Not even the slightest flaw is tolerated — they will repeat their 2-minute, 25-second routine with mind-numbing devotion for six months before performing it in front of an audience.

But the Twinkles also act their age, chatting about "Toddlers & Tiaras," how much they hate hair spray and how blueberries turn their teeth purple — all while doing backflips.

"Cheerleading’s taken over the world," World Cup co-owner Elaine Pascale says. "It’s on TV. It’s in magazines. Our community has really grown to be very, very vast as far as encompassing a lot of lay people that never knew such a thing existed."

The girls are aware they are phenoms, devoting their unnaturally chiseled bodies, their time, their emotional capacity and their parents’ money — some more than $10,000 a year — to being the best. Because when you’re a Twinkle, nothing else matters.

They begin practice in May, focused on the National Cheerleaders Association All-Star National Championship in Dallas the following February, smiling through sweat and tears that wouldn’t dare smudge their waterproof mascara.

Despite there being only a handful of teams nationally capable of even performing at their level, no one on this year’s Twinkles team has won in Dallas, which only further motivates them.

"The Twinkles, they come in here and nothing is ever enough; they just want more and more and more," Pascale says. "I don’t think they actually realize how good they are."

Starting last summer, the Twinkles granted full access to a Star-Ledger team that would chronicle everything from tumbling practices and beach parties to spray tanning sessions and behind-the-scenes tongue lashings at the national championship. Along the way, there were power struggles between coaches and parents, breakdowns and moments of joy unrestrained. There were also rhinestones and glitter — lots of glitter.

Everything was done so the team would peak in Dallas, where a victory earns the only banner the gym’s owners will even consider hanging on their walls. More importantly, every girl dreams of winning the embroidered leather jacket with the words "National Champions" on the back.

"We need to get the jackets," says Lauren Preston, a 12-year-old Twinkle veteran, capturing the focus of every girl on her team. "We need to get our name out there."

For the rest of the article see http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/0 ... twink.html

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