ECU Congress Joins 100 Cheer People
Last Friday evening the second ECU Congress took off with panels focusing on current matters on European cheerleading. The event joined almost one hundred cheerleading officials, judges and coaches that would exchange on Covid restrictions for event producers, coaches database, judging actualities and rules. The event closed the next day with an afternoon plenary session on the future format of European championships.
The event kicked of with the Coaches and Athletes latest project pitch on coaches database. “The idea is to establish a base number of coaches within ECU,” the C&A Committee chairman Michael Pasieczny started out.
Looking to create a platform of social interaction, the project wishes to be beneficial to both coaches looking to travel and coach, as well as teams looking to bring in new people.
Pasieczny was followed by ECL Steering Committee head Marko Sabol with ECL Covid regulations for event producers. The pandemic situation seeing everlasting changes, he advised caution and communication as the strongest attributes to a successful international ECL event.
The last part of the evening revolved about the upcoming ICU Europeans when the panels were moderated by the Judges Committee head Anne Achte and Rules Committee head Ursula Hann.
The first addressed the judges selection for the upcoming Europeans, highly recommending a recertification course and much practice to get back into shape. Achte was backed by Liz Rifino and Mike Cooper, heads of education programmes at ICU.
The moderators seized the opportunity to invite all judges to an in-person certification course in Slovenia’s Ljubljana in April.
The evening was closed by the rules panel themed around age restrictions. A well argued debate has resolved around the topic, closing the firs congress day at well past 22.00h.
The congress continued on Saturday with a closing plenary session for ECU members and guests. The participants discussed the future format of Europeans in preparation for the Athens general assembly meeting.
“This is an important topic and we usually do not have enough time to discuss it properly at AGMs,” ECU President and session moderator Aljaž Britvič said ahead of the meeting. “We should discuss it and hear everyone’s opinions so that we can make a good proposition at the assembly in Greece:”
The debate that saw representatives of 20 countries lasted nearly two hours and was closed with the Hellenic Cheerleading Federation’s invitation to Greece, where the European cheer community will gather for the first time after 2019 for ICU Europeans 2022.