Kris Shepherd

Kris Shepherd is a foundational architect of modern cheerleading and school dance who transformed dispersed athletic and performance practices into structured, repeatable systems taught and broadcast nationwide. She entered the Universal Cheerleaders Association at nineteen as one of its first twenty instructors during the organization's formative period, when summer camps were becoming laboratories for integrating athletic skills, crowd leadership, and choreography.

In 1976, Shepherd collaborated with Jerry Starnes on a UCA college demonstration set to the theme from *Rocky*—identified as the first cheerleading routine to music and the direct predecessor of modern competition performance. The breakthrough was organizational: a continuous score allowed chants, stunts, transitions, and visual peaks to be shaped as a single timed routine rather than discrete elements.

Shepherd then extended this structured approach to school dance. In 1980, she and Jeff Webb founded Universal Dance Camps, now the Universal Dance Association, to serve high-school and college dancers through campus camps and clinics. UDA's official history credits the organization with replacing the narrower "drill team" label with "dance team," language that came to describe a broad competitive and school-performance field.

Her event-building work created durable national platforms. She organized and administered the first National High School Cheerleading Championship in 1980, the first College Cheerleading National Championship in 1983, and the first National Dance Team Championship in 1985. As leader of Varsity's Special Events division in the 1980s, Shepherd developed additional performance opportunities, including the first UCA All American trip to London's New Year's Day Parade in 1985. These projects linked camp training, public spectacle, television, and national competition into a shared ecosystem.

After forty-three years, Shepherd retired as Executive Vice President at Varsity Brands and Executive Producer of the National Championships on ESPN. Her record spans choreography, pedagogy, organizational naming, event production, and broadcast presentation—fields that collectively shaped how American school cheer and dance teams are seen.