Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea and Chelsea Castellanos.
Chelsea and and Chelsea, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Our story really begins with me, Chase, falling in love with cheerleading as a junior in high school. While attending Shiloh High School, in Gwinnett county, I fell in love with sport of competitive cheerleading. I’d found a sport where I was accepted, I was supported, I was filled with positivity, and most of all found a place where friends became family and the gym became home.
During a time in which my home life was lacked a lot of structure and discipline, cheerleading became my motivation for everything. It became my motivation for work, for school, and for life. During high school, I started working a local cheerleading gym, teaching tumbling classes. I instantly fell in love with coaching.
Cheering in college was a big motivation for me. I tried out and made the squad at the University of West Georgia which ultimately fueled my decision to attend school there. However, a lack of structure and discipline in high school carried over into my freshmen year of college and ended up dropping out after my first semester with a D average on academic probation. The cycle continued with me finding myself in quite a bit of legal trouble which ultimately landed me behind bars from September 21st 2006 to the beginning of August 2007. That was a period of time in which I spent a lot of time reflecting on my life up to that point. I was 20 years old, behind bars, and living a life I knew I didn’t want. The only thing that pushed to get things back on track was cheerleading.
I found myself in a very fortunate situation with legal issues. Since, I was so young, once my entire sentence was complete, it became a sealed record and allowed me to continue with a normal life. As soon as I was released, my old boss at USA Cheers gave me a chance to start working again. I quickly enrolled into Gwinnett Technical College and began taking classes. All I knew was that I wanted to go back to college at UWG and cheer again.
From that point forward, everything became about school and cheer. I started back at UWG in fall of 2008, won two UCA college national championships with my cheerleading teams, earned my degree, and gained valuable coaching experience working for Douglasville Gymnastics and Cheerleading. It was my time coaching at Douglasville Gymnastics and Cheerleading, that I knew I wanted to be a gym owner. My time at Douglasville came to end in the summer of 2011 when I graduated from UWG.
After undergrad, I spent sometime in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and amateur bodybuilder but knew I wanted to get back to coaching and knew I wanted to continue my education and earn my masters.
By summer of 2012, I had applied and been accepted to UGA for my masters, and had an opportunity to try-out and make the cheerleading team at UGA. I cheered at some of the biggest games in college football including the 2012 SEC Championship and competed in Daytona at NCA college nationals. The same stage at Netflix’s CHEER. For me, that was a very big personal goal and an experience I would not trade for anything. It was also during this time that I began my employment for long standing cheerleading gym, Atlanta Jayhawks. I worked side by side with owner, Kelly Halcomb, and learned a lot about running a cheerleading gym and all-star program.
After my first year of graduate school, and after my first year cheering at UGA, I knew it was time to begin focusing on some career decisions. I decided not to return to cheer for my second year of graduate school and began making steps towards opening my own cheerleading gym. I purchased equipment, mats, and created an LLC., named Southern AthIetics Cheer and Dance. I soon parted ways with Jayhawks in Summer of 2013, as I entered my second year of graduate school. However, things began to slow down, and fear started to creep in and I began to abandon the idea of starting a gym. I paid for my equipment to go to storage, and soon found myself employed with another long time cheer gym, possibly the longest running program in Georgia, Pro Cheer All-Stars.
From Summer 2013 to Spring 2014, I worked for Pro Cheer all-stars. This was during my last year of graduate school, so I would commute three times a week from Athens, Georgia to Hoscthon, Georgia to coach tumbling classes, and head coach their senior co-ed level 4 team. As this was my last year of graduate school, and I was no longer cheering with UGA, I decided to join the open co-ed level six team at the Stingray All-stars in Marrietta, Georgia. This open team consisted of many former and current college cheerleaders and all-star coaches from other programs. We competed at Cheersport and earned a bid to compete at the USASF World’s competition held in Orlando, Florida. This was the season that I truly found my passion for coaching. I knew I loved cheerleading and I knew I loved coaching but this was a year that changed my perspective on coaching.
By spring 2014, the season with Pro Cheer was finished, and after competing at World’s, my season with Stingray’s was finished. Graduation from grad school came and went with a blur, and soon I was head long into summer, looking for “grown up” employment. Every time I had an interview for sales position, marketing position, or recruiting position, I would get this angst, knowing deep down that I didn’t want to work in a desk job or cubicle.
By summer, I managed to sell off the equipment that I originally purchased for Southern Athletics, dissolved the business completely, and spent the summer freelance personal training, competing as an amateur bodybuilder, somehow started a BBQ catering business, and living off my savings.
Summer came and went, I had to move from Athens, back to mom’s house, in Snellville, Georgia. I worked some odd jobs here and there at different cheer gyms but ultimately lost that passion that I’d had for coaching only months before. This was a dark time for me. I was 28 with a master’s degree and went from living independently and having it all figured out, to having no real job, blowing through my savings, and having to move back home. It was a huge shot to the ego.
At the start of 2015, I’d decided enough was enough. I needed to get control of my life and get things moving in a positive direction. I’d had a few colleagues reach out to me about working with their high school programs and getting involved with the school systems. I knew with my degrees, and background working with kids, that I could be a good candidate for working in education. I applied and was hired as a substitute teacher in Gwinnett County and that began my first steps into education. At the same time, I began rebuilding a cheer brand and started developing a company called Spirit Tech Cheerleading Camps and Clinics. I began reaching out to my networks of friends and marketing myself as a camp and clinic company. That first summer saw us working with teams in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Through my camps and clinics, I found myself employed and working as a lay coach for a school in East Ridge, TN and by the end summer of 2015, I’d moved to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia in a one bed room apartment, applied for subbing position in Hamilton County, TN and was hired as a long term substitute for an elementary PE teacher position. Needless to say, by September of 2015, I was finally out of my year long rut. I’d fallen in love with teaching, coaching had a real purpose again, and I was living on my own.
It was during this time that I met, my now wife, Chelsea. We’d connected on Tinder and ended up talking for about two weeks before we went on our first date. She was a former WNBA Atlanta Dream Cheerleader, and Georgia Force Arena Football Cheerleader. We had several connections including cheer at rival high schools, graduating the same year, having many mutual friends, and I cheered with her sister at UWG. I remember our first date like it was yesterday. She came up to visit on a Sunday afternoon and we went hiking in Cloudland Canyon, and went to the Chattanooga market and in downtown Chattanooga. It’s safe to say from that point forward, we were in separable.
By Spring of 2016, I’d moved back to Atlanta, and her and I were steadily working towards building a life together. We decided to move back to Gwinnett, where we are both from, and continue pursuing our teaching careers for GCPS. Summer of 2016 was the first time Chelsea had come to work and teach a cheer camp with me. She instantly fell in love, and her and I realized very quickly that we make a really great coaching team. By the end of summer 2016, Chelsea and I were both working for GCPS and doing some cheer clinics on side, mostly during the summer. Eventually, her and I ended up teaching at the same middle school, her in 6th grade math, and me in 8th grade special education. Naturally, with both of us working at the same school, we ended up coaching the middle school cheerleading program together.
What many people may or may not tell you, is that working in special education is very difficult. The stress will kill you. By fall of 2019, right after Chelsea and I purchased our first home, I hit an emotional rock bottom with teaching. I am not sure what the tipping point was but I knew I couldn’t continue living under that kind of stress anymore. The only thing that continued to bring me joy, was going to practice with team. Chelsea was side by side with me through step of that difficult process of walking away from my education career. It was December 2019, literally, right after our middle schools competed at the Deep South Spirit competition, after a lot of discussion with our cheer parents, we decided it was time to turn Spirit Tech Cheerleading Camps and Clinics into Spirit Tech Cheerleading and All-stars. We started looking for commercial spaces that same afternoon.
Everything moved very quickly after making that decision. During winter break, and I began pricing equipment, and found a spring floor in Louisiana, purchased mats, and found our current location at 825 Tucker Court. Winder, Georgia 30680. I started looking for class management software, and planning all our logos, dates, and logistics for our all-star program. By February of 2020, I had to step away from education all together because I knew I needed to do everything I could to have the gym opened by March. Then COVID shut everything down.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been the easiest road but it has been worth it. The timing of our opening could not be worst. When we planned to open the gym, the time line was to be open and running by mid March. When COVID shut everything down, we had to wait it out, using up all of our free rent in the process. We never saw it coming. The joke through it all was that this will be our book. We managed to make our first rent payment, barely, as well as our house bills, but it has definitely been a challenge.
We also had some pretty underhanded cheer industry stuff happen, where a competitor opened a cheer gym in our same industrial park. The catch is they recruited their coaches and kids from the Atlanta Jayhawks and took about 150 kids from their program. So that has been another challenge. I think overall the biggest challenge has been opening back up through the pandemic and keeping the doors open for our kids.
Spirit Tech Cheerleading and All-Stars – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Spirit Tech Cheerleading and All-Stars is a cheerleading training facility that specializes in tumbling instruction, stunting instruction, choreography, skills camps and clinics, all-star cheerleading teams, and recreational and school cheerleading support. We offer one on one instruction tumbling and stunt instruction as well as one and one and group personal training.
I am most proud of our gym being open. This has been a huge dream of mine for many years and the fact that we are here today is something that I am most proud. My staff is amazing, my families provide so much support, and I think given all the circumstances, I am simply proud that we are here today.
What sets us apart from others is our entire approach to coaching. We create nurturing and positive environment where kids can thrive because they know they’re supported and in place where mistakes are supposed to happen and learning is the entire goal. I believe our time spent as educators and teachers is what sets us apart. We want our gym to be home our athletes and their families.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I am most proud of just being open and having an opportunity to live a life long dream.
Contact Info:
- Address: 825 Tucker Ct.
Winder, Georgia 30680 - Website: www.spirittechcheer.com
- Phone: 404-784-8797
- Email: spirittechcheer@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/spirittechcheerleading
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/spiritttechcheerleading
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