Pablo Acuna from the Universidad de Santiago de Chile won the 2020 IDUS Dance Challenge, getting past compatriots Catalina and Simon, who also belong to the same Cheerleading team.
The IDUS Dance Challenge was conducted over two weeks, starting 6 September, running up to the International Day of University Sport on 20 September.
“I feel very happy to represent my team and the University of Santiago in this activity for sport, since it is what I am passionate about,” said a delighted Pablo to FISU, after winning the challenge. “I prepared a short routine considering the time and skills that I had, and tried to give my best. I thank all the people who voted for me and the excellent competitors who participated”.
Nearly 4,000 votes were cast on FISU’s Instagram stories, to help decide the winner of the challenge. The ‘virtual tournament’ started with two of our amazing World University Championship cheerleading athletes creating bespoke routines for the challenge which all of FISU’s fans, followers and audiences on social media were invited to emulate, with their own spin on it.
The first routine was created by Sabrina Trolio, 4th year Intermediate/Senior from Brock University, Canada. She was a participant on the 2018 Brock Cheer team that represented Canada at the FISU World University Cheerleading Championships in Lodz, Poland in 2018.
Dance II was certainly more of a challenge, and it was from Brazilian Isac Medeiros. Difficult though it looked, participants knew they did not have to copy the routine exactly but in fact put their own creative spins on it.
Among the entries received through Instagram before the deadline of 12 September, the top eight best, funniest, or most extreme versions made it to the quarterfinals that started on 14 September.
Each day after that saw a head-to-head match up and open voting on Instagram to decide the quarterfinals, semifinals and finally a title match up on 20 September!
The online challenge created quite a stir, with around 4,000 votes polled on FISU’s Instagram stories, leading to more than 100,000 impressions in the IDUS week alone (15-22 September).
During the same period, FISU’s Facebook page recorded 2.06 million unique users and more than a million video views – which was a record of sorts, outside of the World University Games-time period and the University World Cup Football.
On the FISU Twitter too, there were around 10,000 impressions every day, during the IDUS week. It comes as no suprise that the most popular tweet was Sabrina Trolio’s IDUS routine.
Due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic this year, IDUS could not be celebrated as it has been in the past, with mass gatherings and sporting activities for hundreds, if not thousands of people. Therefore, FISU brought to its member federations and to the university sports community, a challenge that everyone could participate in – from the safety of their homes.