Bay State All Star Cheer and Dance
Competitive cheerleading and dance
By Kate Daly Contributing Writer
Region - Bay State All Stars is located at 11 McKeon Road, Worcester, and can be visited online at www.baystateallstars. com. The phone number is 508-754-0632. Karen Anastasi and Matthew Holdridge are co-owners of the company, which offers programs in competitive cheerleading and dance.

Co-owners of Bay State All Stars Matthew Holdridge and Karen Anastasi, in front of the program's many awards

What is Bay State All Stars? "It's mainly a competition cheer and dance program," Karen Anastasi said. "We do have classes for recreational cheerleading, but the majority of our members are here purely for competition reasons ... They travel and compete at local as well as national competitions." What are the competitions like? "Competitions are the exciting part of the program," Anastasi said. "They can be a small local comp, in a school gym, or a national comp in a venue like Universal Studios in Orlando. Cheerleaders and dancers come from all over New England or the country, each comp is different. Each team is in a specific division, based on skills and age."

How is this different from school cheerleading? "It has no affiliation with any school," Matthew Holdridge said. "The kids come from all the different surrounding towns. Rather than if they were cheering for a school, for a football team, they are the attraction."

"Cheerleading is a sport, as opposed to an extracurricular [activity] ... They're not on the sidelines watching the athletes," Anastasi said. "They are the athletes. That's probably the biggest misconception about cheerleading, especially all-star cheerleading.

"When we fill the DCU Center, they're there to see us. They're not there to see a football game with cheerleading on the side. We fill DCU, Mohegan Sun, huge arenas with people who come to see competitive cheerleading.

"What I love about the All Star world is the excitement and the drive I see in our athletes. Our members condition and train like 'traditional' athletes and have the showmanship of performers."

How successful are your teams? "We brought five teams to Florida [in April] and all five teams won national championships," Anastasi said.