Minium: ODU Cheerleaders Coach Tara Lynne Cannon Showed Incredible Dedication to her Team

NORFOLK, Va. – She'd been in labor for hours and as with any expectant mother, yearned to hear her son cry, watch her husband cut his umbilical cord and then hold her first child to her chest.

"I spent nine months envisioning how that moment was going to be," Tara Lynne Cannon said.

It turned out to be very different experience than what she'd dreamed of. When Mason Andrew Hilbert was born, he wasn't breathing. After holding her son for a few seconds, doctors whisked him away.  

A doctor cut his cord and their son was taken to the corner of the delivery room as they worked to revive and stabilize him.

"He was limp," Tara said. "And the doctors and nurses would not tell us what was going on."

Doctors revived Mason quickly, but they didn't know how long he'd been without oxygen, and he didn't react as you would expect a healthy newborn to react.

Tara's husband, Dane Hilbert, held his wife's hand while they waited.

"She's looking at me and I'm looking at her," he said. "I had nothing to say because I did not know what was going on.

"I was doing my best to try and console her and still focus on what's going on in the corner.

"Looking back, I couldn't even wrap my head around what was going on at the time."

After an hour, they were told their son would live. It was three days before Mason cried and five days before he left the hospital. During the early part of his stay he was hooked to a ton of tubes.

It would be a week before they finally learned their son would grow up as a normal, healthy child.

In spite of that ordeal, just 14 days after Mason was born, Tara headed to Daytona Beach, Florida, and coached the Old Dominion University cheerleaders to a sixth-place finish in the national cheering championships late last spring.



Mason stayed with her dad, who is a pediatric nurse, and Tara's mother, Terri Cannon, for the week she was in Florida.

Even so, heading to Florida showed incredible dedication. 

"That's Tara Lynne," Dane said. "She's so committed to being a coach. She loves the girls, she loves cheering.

"She knew I was here and her mom was here, so she felt comfortable leaving. She made the commitment to the girls knowing she was going to have a baby around that time.

"There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to muster up the strength and get down there. She needed to be there."

CeeCee Arnold, a senior cheer captain last season, said she and her teammates were in awe of their coach.

"We all knew she couldn't go with us," she said. "She kept saying, 'I'm going to nationals,' and we kept saying, 'No you're not.'


CeeCee Arnold

"But she pulled together and came to practice a week after Mason was born and she went to nationals.

"She's one of the strongest people I've ever met."

Tara and assistant coach Rachel Ayers grew up together in Chesapeake, where they both cheered for Hickory High School and later coached middle and high school teams together.

Rachel cheered at ODU. Tara cheered at Louisville and Florida Atlantic and won she helped win national championships at both schools.

Tara and Rachel reconnected when she returned to Hampton Roads a few years ago, both as coaches and friends.

"When we were coaching in high school, we used to joke that one day we're going to coach at ODU," Tara said. "ODU is our hometown school."

When the ODU job came open in 2019, Rachel texted Tara and told her she was going to apply for the job. Eventually, Rachel suggested that Tara apply, too.

"She told me, 'If I get the job, you will be my assistant coach' and I told her that she'd be my assistant coach if I got the job," Tara said.

"I ended up getting the job and coaching with Rachel has just been phenomenal."

ODU's cheerleading team was in good shape when they took over, but Carolyn Crutchfield, ODU's executive senior associate athletic director, said she has seen marked improvement.

"You can really see a difference in their performance," Crutchfield said. "They have better skills. They're doing different cheers. They're doing a better job of engaging the crowd."

Tara also manages Big Blue's schedule, and ODU's scruffy, lovable mascot is very much in demand, from birthday parties to corporate celebrations.



Interest in ODU cheering has also exploded. Cannon said 30 girls tried out in 2019 and 65 this year.

And that's in spite of the fact that being a cheerleader isn't an easy gig. There are no scholarships, but not unlike athletes, being a cheerleader requires a ton of sacrifice.

The season extends from before the first football game – cheerleaders also have preseason practice – through the end of basketball season. Before, during and after the athletic seasons, there are dozens of other events cheerleaders must attend.

"They are ambassadors for the university," Tara said. "They attend so many community events.

"We hold them to a very high standard. They must maintain good grades (the squad had a cumulative GPA of 3.14 last year). We make sure they're going to class and if they're not in the front row, they're in the second row.

"When they are out in the community, I want them in cheer shirts and I want them engaged, talking with children and their parents, with donors.

"In July, they had seven events in the community, from ODU Day at a Norfolk Tides game to ODU Day at Nats Park.

"They are respectful, they are dedicated and so hard working. I'm so blessed because they work their butts off."

They practice several times a week and practices during the summer went as long as four hours.

It may surprise you to know that cheerleaders also work out, just like ODU's athletes.

"I feel like there's a misconception when it comes to cheerleaders," Tara said. "Years ago, cheerleaders just waved their pom poms at football games. But that is no longer true.

"They are throwing girls into the air, stacking girls two and three stories high on top of one another. They flip their bodies through the air and pray that they land on their feet.

"These girls are athletes."

They work especially long hours on a football weekend – ODU hosts Liberty Saturday night at 6.

They can be on the football field cheering for four hours, but they are on campus six hours before each game. They perform on Kaufman Mall and at S.B. Ballard Stadium prior to each game and mingle with fans in the tailgate lots.

"Sometimes I feel like we are some of the last ones to leave the stadium," said CeeCee, who is enrolled at ODU working on a graduate degree but is no longer cheering.

She said being a cheerleader and a student at the same time forces you to become good at time management. It also requires sacrificing some of your social life.

"At first, it was difficult to find a balance," she said. "I struggled some my freshman year."



She said it helped immensely when ODU's athletics program began providing academic support to cheerleaders as it does to all athletes. Amy Lynch, director of student-athlete services, is the academic adviser for ODU's 26 cheerleaders.

The cheerleading world is a small one and although CeeCee was raised in Midlothian, Virginia, just outside of Richmond, she met Tara when she was 13 at a cheering event.

"I've always looked at her as a role model," she said. "When I learned she was going to be coach, I was so happy.

"I call her my mom. She's my mom away from home."

When Cannon showed up for cheerleader tryouts at FAU, the coach suggested to Dane Hilbert, a cheering veteran, that he begin working out with her. She's about your skill level and I think you'll train well together, the coach said.

They agreed and became workout buddies. They shared a passion for cheerleading and eventually, a passion for each other. But not at first.

"We had a mutual respect for each other's abilities," Tara said. "We trained together a lot. We went to the gym and just tumbled and stunted and tried to push each other to be better."

"But," she added with a smile, "it took a year and a half for it to develop into something else."

They've been a couple for six years and married for two.

Although Dane works at the Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, they still share a love for cheering. Dane is often at ODU's cheerleading practice and on occasion, when the student who wears the Big Blue attire is otherwise busy, Dane plays the role of Big Blue.

"Tara and Dane grew up in cheerleading," Crutchfield said. "You can see how much they love the sport and how much they want our program to succeed."

Tara must love the sport to keep the schedule she does. She teaches at Indian River High School and coaches the cheerleaders at Great Bridge High School, where she won a state championship last spring, in addition to coaching at ODU and raising a toddler.

"Tara is the hardest working person I've met in my entire life," Dane said.

Mason has become a fixture at ODU practices. At first, Tara brought him in a baby carrier, and he would snooze or watch practice quietly. But now that he's getting mobile, Dane attends practice as much as he can as their son mimics what the cheerleaders are doing.

The cheerleaders dote on Mason like he is their little brother.



Even before Mason was born, CeeCee said the cheerleaders felt close to Mason, especially after they learned about the ordeal his parents experienced during his birth.

"When we learned what was going on, we did a prayer circle together," CeeCee said. "He hadn't been born yet but we all felt like he was our little brother. All we could do was pray and ask God to touch Tara, ask God to touch Mason.

"The power of prayer showed."

Tara teared up when I asked her about how her team responded.

"Rachel is an amazing assistant coach who just took over and did a great job," she said. "The cheerleaders were wonderful. They would call and text me multiple times a day."

She says she was especially moved when she heard about the prayer circle.

"That meant more than a title could ever mean to me, that we're that close, that they love my son like he's their little brother," she said.

"I love my girls so much."