The First EDE Red Squad (c. 2002)

A year after starting Basketball Squad, I had several requests from parent and kids to offer a competition team. Competition cheer was in its infancy in Washington in 2001. The Washington State Cheer Coaches Association had very recently been formed with the idea of perhaps offering a state championship for high school and all-star teams, but that was still a few years away. At the time there weren’t any truly recreational cheer squads competing—only school teams and all-star teams. So EDE (still Bellevue Dream Elite at that time) competed in the all-star division. We competed for three seasons and came away with many trophies. Unfortunately there were some controversies in the competition world and powers-that-be at Bellevue Parks decided to eliminate competitive cheer from its offerings.

The competition team was called Red Squad and the non-competing team was called White Squad. White Squad eventually morphed into Dream Team and those on Red Squad who wanted to continue competing merged with the (now closed) Galaxy Cheer All-Stars in Redmond. EDE became wholly community-focused, performing in and around the Seattle area and becoming well-known for quality productions. It wouldn’t be until 2014 that Red Squad would make its return to EDE.

In next month’s installment…Dance/Drill Team starts and other fun additions