At Work With ... Kelli Hunter Beamon, chief executive and coach

When I was in college, I coached a recreation squad. Then, out of college, I continued to teach dance, and I coached some recreation teams. And then I started a team at the elementary school in Richmond, where I was teaching.

From there, I knew I wanted to coach cheerleading, because I still wanted to cheer. And I cheered for two semipro (football) teams: Virginia Thunder and Virginia Crusaders. A position became available at Maury High School, so I applied.

Just from cheering at Western Branch and growing up in the cheerleading industry, coaching at Maury was a different type of experience for me. They do a lot more stepping and dancing. It’s just a different style of cheering in Portsmouth and Norfolk. For instance, Western Branch just won first place in their district and then second place in the regional, and then they went to state and placed. Everyone on their squad can do a back handspring and a back tuck.

Careerwise, I knew that for me to go to the next level, I had to stop coaching at Maury. Then I could devote more time to starting the business.

I was at Maury from 2004 until 2008, which was my last year coaching. I did my first real camp in 2007 at the recreation center in Western Branch. And we had 30 girls come. We did T-shirts that said “Spirit Enhancers Mini Camp.” I was really surprised at how many people came to this first camp. It was awesome. Parents were asking, “When are you going to do another one?”

I had a grand opening on Dec. 1. I went on 103 Jamz and did an interview. We had one of the radio personalities come in to emcee. And I had 85 people come in that day.

I have 30 total (students). I have three cheerleading squads. I have one adult class. I have two tumbling classes. One of those is a 2- and 3-year-old class. They are too cute. And then I have a hip-hop dance class. The hip-hop dancers, when we get a few more, then they will be able to compete. Ultimately, we want to go to the next level in our competitions. For us that would be U.S. finals. There are different competitions where you can get the bid to go to the U.S. finals, which is held in May. The bigger cheer companies have these huge competitions, two- and three-day competitions where you go and compete in different rounds, and the winner of the division will get a bid to go to the U.S. finals.

The bigger companies, you can see them on the ESPN competitions. (Parents) pay a lot of money at these gyms. Some are $150 a month. I’m $40 a month. You go to their Web sites. They have all these flashy things, and you see all of these girls, these huge trophies. People come in, and I’m always self-conscious, because I know what the bigger cheer gyms look like: huge warehouses, high ceilings, spring floors, all this tumbling apparatus. I think that we have done an excellent job of training our girls on the equipment we have.

I’m happy with the response, and I really think that I’m getting people to open their eyes and look at cheerleading in a different way. I do have a lot of people that question me, my qualifications. So I try to stay up on every current trend. I’m at every conference.

I make sure that each girl achieves some measure of success, no matter how small. I realize we’re not saving the world with cheerleading, but I do think every girl that comes in can walk out with something that can help her in her everyday life. We work on self-confidence. We talk about discipline, and they get discipline from me, of course. But I smile when I’m being tough.

– As told to staff writer Carolyn Shapiro