The tragic murder-suicide of a Utah mom and her 11-year-old daughter while attending a cheer competition has brought the high-pressure environment of dance competitions into focus.
What should have been a weekend of glitter, trophies and team spirit instead ended in horror when Tawnia McGeehan, 38, shot dead her daughter Addi Smith, and then took her own life in a Las Vegas hotel room, hours before her little girl was due to compete in a cheer competition on February 15.
Her mother Connie McGeehan, 61, acknowledged to The Post Tawnia had struggled with her mental health, but said the only thing amiss before her death was Tawnia getting “mean texts” from other cheer moms.
The incident sparked an outpouring of grief and outrage from people all over the world. What came next was a wave of testimony from cheer moms across the country who say the culture surrounding elite youth teams is “toxic.”
The drama often festers in the “parent viewing section” at gyms but it’s online where it thrives, according to several cheer moms who spoke to The Post.
An investigation by The Post uncovered Facebook threads riddled with venom: moms accusing other children of “stealing” spots, threatening to report rival families to gym owners, and celebrating when rival competitors faltered.
In comments viewed by The Post, parents blasted judges as “corrupt” and labeled 10-and 11-year-olds “lazy.”
“So many of those moms are living through their daughters, their makeup is pasted on, their hair is so glued down, it looks like an old lady’s … Why in life does it have to be a ‘competition’? Let them have fun, laugh, positivity etc,” wrote one mom online.
Another mom from Nevada described Facebook groups where parents dissected children’s performances frame by frame.
“They’re 10. But you’d think this was the Olympics the way people act. If your daughter gets center stage, another mom is messaging three others about how the coach is ‘playing favorites.’ ”
Several parents claimed it was common for cheer moms to accuse each other’s children of “stealing” spotlight positions and to suggest certain families had inside influence.
“It’s like high school, but with credit cards and carpools. If you didn’t align with the dominant moms, your kid felt it,” said another Nevada mom who made the decision to pull her daughter from a competitive dance team last year.
“It’s not the girls who make it unbearable — it’s the parents,” an all-star cheer mom from Utah, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Post.
“The gossip, the jealousy, the group chats — it’s relentless.
“If your daughter gets a better position in the routine, someone’s mom will say the coach is playing favorites. If your kid falls, people would whisper that she shouldn’t even be on the team.
“If your kid wins, someone else’s mom is gossiping about why she shouldn’t have.”
Owner of the Cheer Mom blog, Kristen Wheeler, 43, said cheerleading is “intensely emotional” for children and their parents due to a mix of pressure and time constraints.
“In football your kids get four quarters to prove themselves or make up for mistakes, in baseball they get nine innings,” she told The Post.
“In cheerleading, the maximum you get is two minutes and 30 seconds to show the world what you can do.
“It’s a very perfection-driven industry, so that creates a level of intensity and anxiety for all.”
Wheeler, who was a cheer mom for 13 years and also hosts a podcast, said she was aware of various online chat groups where nasty moms bullied each other, but she defended cheer as just like any other sport, where there will always be parents with an axe to grind.
“Toxic cultures in cheer exist,” she said, adding that it was also a “family”.
“The majority want to see our kids succeed and there is so much that rides on those couple of minutes for our kids that we don’t want to see them hurting or disappointed.
Competitive cheer and dance can cost families tens of thousands of dollars a year once travel, choreography, private lessons and numerous uniforms are factored in, Wheeler said.
“It’s a huge part of your life when you buy into it,” she added. “And when emotions come out, people can say and do things they don’t mean out of emotional intensity.”
Many comments on related forums also repeatedly raised the cost — financial and emotional — of chasing titles, and the stress that adds to a situation already fraught with tensions.
One Texas mom told The Post she spent more than $15,000 in a single season.
“When you’re paying that kind of money, some parents start to see it as an investment,” she said. “And when the return isn’t a first-place trophy, they look for someone to blame.”
Sports performance consultant Dr. Alan Goldberg advises coaches, athletes and parents at the very top levels of sport on how to deal with the pressures around them.
Addressing parents, he writes on his website: “Your key role here when it comes to your child’s sport is to support their goals, not drive them.
“This means that the way that you go about supporting them in their quest is critical. Your job as the parent and mature adult here is to teach your children-athletes the right life lessons.
“To understand that there are far more significant things at stake here than winning, playing time or who scores what. Lessons like hard work and sacrifice, the pursuit of excellence, learning the value of failure and mistakes, good sportsmanship … handling success and failure with dignity; the list goes on and on.”
However, this persistent dynamic of adults feuding with each other online while their daughters practice pyramids and tumbling is what some cheer parents claim ultimately drove them out of the sport.
“I walked out of the gym with my daughter last year and never went back,” one woman posted.
Another mother wrote: “I just drop my kid off and head to the nail salon, so I don’t have to deal with any of it.”
The tragic case of Tawnia is an extreme example. Although she left a note, it has not been made public and the motives behind her decision to end both her and her daughter’s lives are still in question.
Connie, her mother, said Tawnia had suffered depression but was on medication and appeared to have it under control in the lead up to the tragedy.
But she also pointed to other cheer moms allegedly bullying her.
“In the last comp they had, another girl got dropped and some of the moms were saying it was because of Addi. They were texting [Tawnia] mean stuff and blaming Addi,” she told The Post.
“Cheer was her and Addi’s life. I think something happened the day before [they died] that made her spiral.”
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.