Scholarship Plans

There are't nearly enough cheer scholarships. I want to start one once I graduate (and have money). Requirements:

• High school senior
• Must have 3.0 GPA or higher (verified by submitting a transcript)
• Must have verification of being on the varsity squad by some form of documentation (ie: roster) 
• Must have a letter of recommendation from coach
• Must include community service activities 
• Must include cheer resume video (on flash drive)
• Must attend an accredited university the year after graduation
• Scholarship due October 1. You will be notified of results February 1. 

The Well-rounded Cheerleader: I am looking for 2 cheerleaders (1 male, 1 female) who have a true passion for the sport. I want to award cheerleaders who have the whole package: jumps, stunts, dances, tumbling, cheers, community involvement, cheer involvement, good attitude, good grades. 

Most Dedicated Cheerleader: I am also looking for one cheerleader (male or female) who may not be the best on their squad but they have the most spirit, dedication, and love for the sport.

Cheer video resume:

• Name
• Birthday
• Address
• Phone number 
• College you plan to attend
• Name of squad you are currently on
• Scholarship applying for
• Best jumps, tumbling, dances, stunts, cheers, sidelines (where applicable)
• Number of years you have been involved in cheer
• What cheer means to you
• Your favorite part of cheer
• Any cheer awards won

Cheer Homework

I just read that to be a good athlete you need to be a student of your sport. At first I didn't understand what it meant. Then it hit me. It means that to be a good athlete you need to study your sport. Football players do this I know. They have their games recorded and after the game the coach goes through the plays highlighting what they did well or poorly. The coach uses the video as a learning tool so the athletes can see what they did wrong. I've wanted to do this with my squad for years but it never got accomplished. I want to take the videos as a learning opportunity to the next level. I want to have my girls do cheer homework. What is that? Well I was thinking of having the girls watch YouTube videos on something they are struggling with, like a jump or a stunt. Or maybe have them e-mail me a YouTube video and time in it of a stunt they would like to try. Or a dance that is cute. Maybe have the girls send me music suggestions for the next dance. I want their brains constantly thinking of cheer. Everything in their life should revolve around it or they aren't dedicated enough. If you aren't dedicated enough to be a student of cheer, then why are you involved in the sport? This sport requires immense passion and I ask that of my athletes. 

Picking A Squad and Conditioning

I'm sure I'm not the first one who has thought of this but with my squad I would like to benchmark all of my girls. I think it should start at tryouts. I will need to see what level every girl who is trying out is on. The level that they are on stamina and skill wise is a major factor in who to choose for the squad. I feel like benchmarking every girl would be a lot though.

Maybe I should judge the girls on what skill level they are on first. See what kind of tumbling they can do, how their jumps look, how well they can learn a routine, what level stunts they have; then, choose the top girls from that. After I choose the girls with the greatest skill level, see who have the most stamina. But don't choose just based off of who has the best stamina. Before you can choose your girls you need to look at height. Your bases need to be within a few inches of each other so they can be interchanged in stunts. The back spots need to be a little taller than the bases so they can get a grip on the flyer's ankles. I don't think that grabbing the bases' wrists works as well as pulling up on the flyer's ankles. This may sound shallow, but the flyers need to be thin, muscular, flexible, and preferably short.

Another factor to take into consideration is the girls' history. How do they perform in school? Are poor grades going to keep them from cheering? If they are I don't want you. I don't want to put my time and energy into training you if you are going to get benched because of grades. Are you a trouble maker? Do you get into fights? Do you have a problem listening to your teachers? Do you back talk to adults? I don't want you if you have behavioral issues. I am a cheer coach, not a baby sitter. You are a cheerleader, not a hooligan. Do you start a lot of boy drama? Are you constantly changing boyfriends? Are you starting fights between other girls over boys? I don't want to deal with an emotionally distraught cheerleader every other week because she has bad taste in men who keep breaking up with her. I don't want to have to deal with an athlete who is going to ruin the name of the program because she got pregnant. If you can't keep it in your pants, I don't want you to be my cheerleader. And most importantly do all the possibilities get along? Is there one girl that everyone hates? Are there cliques? I want all of my girls to be friends. If they can't all get along then I am going to get rid of the problem child. 

I feel like this last point is the most important when choosing girls to be on your squad. You can train for skills and stamina. Height differences aren't going to bring a squad down. It is how the girls behave that matters. It is their attitudes about each other and the program that can run a squad into the ground. If they don't respect their team mates, coach, and the program they are going to be the weakest link and need to be purged from the squad before they do irreparable damage to it.

This following list is a rough list of the things I would like to benchmark my girls on. I believe that starting them at their personal level then helping them progress will help build them not only as a cheerleader but as a person. It isn't a huge deal to me how much stamina my girls have in the beginning as long as they work hard to achieve what I want from them. I can train them to be at the level I want them on. I just need their effort and dedication. I will make a personal workout list for my girls to do on their own that will help them develop their weaker areas. For example, if a girl doesn't have the leg strength I would put frog jumps, wall sits, mountain climbers, and leg circles on her list. If a girl has poor jumps I would have her do frog jumps, leg circles, extra jumps on her own, more stretching, I would suggest jump bands. Every day at practice I would like to do an hour and a half of conditioning, then another hour and a half of dance, tumbling, and stunting. Every 20 minutes they can have a 2 minute water break, and a 1 minute break between each item on the list. I expect each of my girls to be stretched before they start practice. This list seems like a lot to me, but I'm not sure if that's because it is a lot or if it's because my squad didn't condition... like at all. I saw how my squad was with no conditioning and I want to push my girls to be the best possible cheerleaders they can be.
 

• Suicides-----------------------------10 minutes
• Bear crawl--------------------------5 minutes
• Burpes-------------------------------5 minutes
• Frog jumps-------------------------5minutes
• Wall sits-----------------------------5 minutes
• Mountain climbers-----------------5 minutes
• Planks--------------------------------5 minutes
• Hand stands-------------------------5 minutes
• V-up----------------------------------150
• Leg circles--------------------------5 minutes each
• Laps----------------------------------10
• Crab dips----------------------------5 minutes each
• Splits---------------------------------5 minutes each
• Push ups-----------------------------50
• Sit ups-------------------------------150
• Box jumps--------------------------5 minutes
• ladders-------------------------------each set twice
• Toe touch----------------------------5 perfect in a row
• Hurdler------------------------------5 perfect in a row
• Herkie--------------------------------5 perfect in a row
• Pike-----------------------------------5 perfect in a row
• Kicks---------------------------------100 each side
• Flexibility/ Balance (What can they pull?)
• Back bend
• Lib
• Heel stretch
• Scale
• Arabesque
• Scorpion
• Chin- chin
• Bow and arrow
• Needle

• Tumbling (Note: Do not choose cheerleaders just based off tumbling ability. Tumbling can be taught, a love of the sport can't. If a girl really loves to cheer but has a significantly lower skill level than the rest of the squad do not immediately dismiss her. She may have a lot of untapped potential that you would just be throwing away)
• Cartwheel
• Round off
• Aerial
• Handspring
• Tuck
• Layout
• Full
• Double Full

There are Consequences to Your Actions/ In-Actions

Ok I was just catching up on Cheerleaders, because I was WAY behind, and Eddy has a great method of punishing his cheerleaders if they drop a stunt or it bobbles at a comp: do that stunt Perfect 20 times. Why had I not thought of this? My squad was ALWAYS dropping stunts (that's what happens when you don't practice) and I was always trying to think up a good way to punish my girls and work on the stunt. This is like a super simple solution. I am absolutely in LOVE.

My coach always said that if we could do a stunt 3 times in a row perfect that it was game-ready. I don't think that this is enough times to know for sure that you aren't going to drop it. I definitely think that more times are needed. 20 may be a little excessive, but I think that the repetition will get it into their minds that dropping a stunt is not tolerable

I also feel that repeating a stunt 20 times perfect (that's at least 20 times, not counting the times that the stunt isn't perfect) may cause injury. I know from the base and backstop's point of view that repetitive stunting is hard on your body. Your wrists, back, legs, and arms hurt. I was never a flyer, so I don't know how their body feels after stunting for long periods of time, but I can imagine that their body feels just as bad if not worse that the bases and backspot. When you're excessively tired is when mistakes are made and in cheerleading an innocent mistake can cause serious injuries.

Cheerleaders need to learn that mistakes are not acceptable, but safety needs to be first and foremost. I think that maybe the number of times a stunt should be repeated perfectly will also depend on the squad and the stunt group. For one stunt group, repeating a stunt 10 times may be miserable, to another stunt group it may take 20 repetitions to feel the same pain.

I Think I'm Going To Do It

After not cheering for 2 years, I have decided that I just can't NOT cheer ever again. I want to start up cheer lessons in my community because this isn't offered in my area. The closest cheer gym is almost 40 miles away. I live in a relatively poor community that can't afford costs of cheer and travel. I want to offer these lessons to give young girls the basics they need to go on to cheer competitively or in high school. These lessons will help the high school squad in the long run because the coach will not have to spend time teaching the basics at the beginning of the season and can get started on learning material. This post is generally going to be me working out the logistics of what I need to do to get this started. Its not a final draft of what I will do, but rather getting my thoughts out.

Location: See if I can use the high school gym, or talk to a church if the high school is not available.

People to talk to: Talk to high school and junior high coaches. Learn what they want the girls to know for their squad and integrate it into the program, talk to school administration for permission to use high school, church board for a church.

Certification: Get certification to have a business, become certified to coach cheer, stunting, and tumbling

Curriculum: Develop a plan of progression. Follow rules set forth by the AACCA or USASF. Youth Recreational Cheer does not have set rules.

Advertising: Facebook page for community, flyers in gas stations, grocery stores, day cares, Twitter for high school

Fees: $20 a session (2-hours), $30 administration fee

Waver: Have parents sign waver saying I am not liable for injuries. Kids must have medical insurance and a physical on file

Ages: 6- 18. General beginner cheer lessons to start with.

Is there anything else I didn't think of??

MIX IT UP

My squad was a bit ridic when it came to dances, sidelines, and cheers. My coach didn't know how to come up with new cheer and dances herself so we only used the material that we learned through the UCA camps and tryout DVDs. Yea. Those SUCK! Because my coach didn't know how to come up with her own stuff the UCA material was all that we knew... We did the EXACT SAME dances, cheers, and sidelines my 4 years of high school. That is one of those things that DRIVES ME CRAZY! I like to mix it up and we got stuck doing the same thing every game, sometimes in the exact same order as the previous game because she was too lazy to change it. The crowd wasn't stupid, they knew what she was pulling. And that is probably one of the reasons they didn't get involved. They had seen it all before. I am a strong believer in coming up with your own dances, cheers, and sidelines for your squad. Doing those robotic nasty UCA dances are SOOOOO junior high. If you're going to jack someone else material at least make it good material! I would also suggest jacking it from a school across the country so they don't find you and bring a beat down (Obvious Sarcasm).

Now I'm just going to link up some Youtube videos of stuff that I like (at least pieces of it I like) and would be cool to use as inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QE0TJBF7Ro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if02tS5-Glk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYLEPtdw4Rk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2luR8Y6Xs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40oZ0PVPRzs

You are beautiful

There is no body type you have to have to be a cheerleader. I am 5"5' and my weight ranges from 145 to  155. I have a huge butt, a bit of a tummy, and thunder thighs. I was still cheer captain. My co-captain was almost 6 foot tall, skinny, and all legs. She backed and I based. We had a short chubby girl fly one season. We also had flyers who were 5 foot 2 and 110 pounds. My point is that just because you aren't a short skinny girl doesn't mean that you can't cheer. Cheerleaders come in all shapes and sizes. We are not all alike like the media portrays us to be. We are each unique, special, and beautiful. The squad needs all types of girls. Don't think that just because you don't have a model's body mean that you can't cheer. If I can do it I know you can too. Just prove yourself and your skills and leave it all out on the mat.