- May 8, 2011
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I go to an average/large school- about 2500 students in a town of about 40k. We have freshman, jv and varsity. For the past few years, freshmen can only make freshman, sophomores can only make jv, and juniors/seniors can only make varsity- this has done wonders in preventing girls from getting burnt out by the time they're juniors. We have separate teams for football/basketball, and about half to 3/4 of the girls do both seasons. There are about 14 girls on each squad. I'd say about a third of us have done competitive cheer at some point at our local small gym. Almost all girls have running/standing bhs. We do not have captains, but the seniors kind of take the place of captains because they make a lot of major decisions. We have two year-round freshman coaches, one year-round jv coach, a varsity football coach, and a basketball varsity coach who is also the program head. We have tryouts in late April. Girls try out in front of all the other girls trying out with a panel of about 4 college cheerleaders who score them on cheer, chant, dance, jumps, tumbling, spirit, and appearance. Tryouts are closed to parents and other spectators. We do not compete but have done both Jamfest-style and UCA-style competitions in the past.
Our school is very "classic". We have simple, clean uniforms and wear small bows with the tails facing backward and crew socks. We do simple cheers and our coach is always ensuring that we are "clean and classy". We wear uniforms to school probably 4 or 5 times a year, like on homecoming day for the pep rally or for big games like our rivalry game. Our coach is insistent that every girl wears sufficient makeup, including red lipstick that half of us love and half of us hate. I personally love the way it looks. We have no piercing/no visible tattoos/no nail polish rules as well for games. We wear hair half-up and half-down, depending on the game and what the seniors want to do. We currently have about 6 uniforms in the program. Freshmen have two, but one is falling apart so they really kind of have one. JV has one for football and two for basketball- one blue and one white (white is only used for basketball). Varsity has the same blue as JV for football and for basketball we use the blue one and a white one that is similar to JV's but not the same.
Freshman cheer home football and basketball (boys and girls) freshman games. JV cheers home football and basketball (boys and girls) JV games. Varsity cheers all football games (home and away), all home basketball games (boys and girls) and some away basketball games (boys and girls). All 3 squads cheer homecoming, the big rivalry game, and senior night for football. JV does the flag routine (google IU Cheerleading flag routine- ours is identical) during home basketball games when the band comes and they also do pre-game with us on those nights (pre-game is in the 20 minutes while the teams are warming up- we do stunting, pyramids, dances, and cheers).
I love our program and girls love cheering for our program. We're big on seniority so as a senior I get a lot of respect and authority on the team because I've earned it by being in the program for 4 years. With the way we assign teams, there's no resentment between girls who get jealous or upset for not making a higher team. We are virtually drama-free and I love it.
Our school is very "classic". We have simple, clean uniforms and wear small bows with the tails facing backward and crew socks. We do simple cheers and our coach is always ensuring that we are "clean and classy". We wear uniforms to school probably 4 or 5 times a year, like on homecoming day for the pep rally or for big games like our rivalry game. Our coach is insistent that every girl wears sufficient makeup, including red lipstick that half of us love and half of us hate. I personally love the way it looks. We have no piercing/no visible tattoos/no nail polish rules as well for games. We wear hair half-up and half-down, depending on the game and what the seniors want to do. We currently have about 6 uniforms in the program. Freshmen have two, but one is falling apart so they really kind of have one. JV has one for football and two for basketball- one blue and one white (white is only used for basketball). Varsity has the same blue as JV for football and for basketball we use the blue one and a white one that is similar to JV's but not the same.
Freshman cheer home football and basketball (boys and girls) freshman games. JV cheers home football and basketball (boys and girls) JV games. Varsity cheers all football games (home and away), all home basketball games (boys and girls) and some away basketball games (boys and girls). All 3 squads cheer homecoming, the big rivalry game, and senior night for football. JV does the flag routine (google IU Cheerleading flag routine- ours is identical) during home basketball games when the band comes and they also do pre-game with us on those nights (pre-game is in the 20 minutes while the teams are warming up- we do stunting, pyramids, dances, and cheers).
I love our program and girls love cheering for our program. We're big on seniority so as a senior I get a lot of respect and authority on the team because I've earned it by being in the program for 4 years. With the way we assign teams, there's no resentment between girls who get jealous or upset for not making a higher team. We are virtually drama-free and I love it.