Iyanna Powell enjoyed her time as a cheerleader at Woodside High School so much that it led to her becoming a cheer coach.
“I started coaching just so I could pour back into the kids my craft,” said Powell, who recently was named the cheerleading coach at Virginia Peninsula Community College.
Powell graduated from Woodside in 2016 and Old Dominion University in 2020, earning a bachelor’s degree in Human Services. She’s working on a master’s in business from Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts and is slated to earn her degree next year. She works for the City of Newport News as a family services specialist. Before that, she taught for about four years at Heritage High School, where she worked in Special Education.
She began her coaching journey n 2021 in a rec league. She moved on to Ella Fitzgerald Middle School in Newport News and Warwick High School (junior varsity level), and still coaches at both schools.
Her drive comes from the challenge of proving to people cheerleading is a sport, ”whether people around us notice it or not.”
“A lot of people think that it’s not a sport,” she added. “A lot of elements of cheer make it more of an athletic sport than most of our sports that we consider athletic.”
Cheerleading, she said, is about more than jumps, kicks and the “cute stuff.”
“No one really sees the hard work, the stunts that (you practice), the choreography that had to be done 20 plus times,” she said.
She’s hoping her love of the sport helps her team members love it, too.
Her team will be at all the home basketball games and as many college events as possible.
For more information on athletics at the College, go to www.vpccgators.com.