High School If You Could Magically Have Three Rule Changes...

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and unless I am mistaken about what you are describing (a video would be good..), you are going against known skill progressions with training like that. not saying it can't work but there are methods for teaching that 'feeling' that provide a safer environment for the bases and top.

This is one of the ways the cheerleading world speaks out of both sides of its mouth.

We are two weeks removed from a thread where people lost their minds saying that having tryouts without outside judges opened you up to litigation.

Then we completely ignore proper progressions in teaching skills because “this is my way.”

So my question is: which would you be more likely to lose? A frivolous lawsuit where a parent is butt hurt over their kid not making the team, or a lawsuit where an attorney can say “this coach was in charge, this is the established skill progression that was ignored, this was the injury suffered, and these are the damages we are seeking.”
 
There’s no translation between having a kick double and being able to do a laid out double twist in a collegiate basket.

I agree with you - baskets are scary, and you have to be aggressive, throwing, catching & flying, or injuries will happen. That being said, I think the only relationship between flying a kick full/double and a flipping basket is the actual flying of the basket. In which case you can train that feeling, and standing up aggressively, throwing with the legs, catching tight (etc.) with clean and high straight ride baskets. The reason I say this is because I have known a few extremely talented flyers who flew in stunts, who had elite tumbling (1+ twists), but couldn't bring themselves to fly a basket toss, period.

Vice versa, on my university team, we had gymnasts who joined the team, with elite tumbling, and no stunting experience, throwing well executed elite level 6 basket tosses within a couple of weeks practice. Granted they had 3 strong, big, men for bases, and these guys wouldn't let a finger hit the ground ever. I too would feel safe throwing just about anything (LOL).
 
I agree with you - baskets are scary, and you have to be aggressive, throwing, catching & flying, or injuries will happen. That being said, I think the only relationship between flying a kick full/double and a flipping basket is the actual flying of the basket. In which case you can train that feeling, and standing up aggressively, throwing with the legs, catching tight (etc.) with clean and high straight ride baskets. The reason I say this is because I have known a few extremely talented flyers who flew in stunts, who had elite tumbling (1+ twists), but couldn't bring themselves to fly a basket toss, period.

Vice versa, on my university team, we had gymnasts who joined the team, with elite tumbling, and no stunting experience, throwing well executed elite level 6 basket tosses within a couple of weeks practice. Granted they had 3 strong, big, men for bases, and these guys wouldn't let a finger hit the ground ever. I too would feel safe throwing just about anything (LOL).

There will always be very, very small percentages of people who live outside the “2 standard deviations of the norm” bell curve. The important thing is to not base an entire training program around those exceptions to the rule.
 
My most hated rule in high school Cheer is that the spotter for coed stunts or the side in two based stunts can’t touch the flyers foot.
It’s ridiculous and I think it contributes to a lot of the danger of coed stunting in HS Cheer. All star, UCA college, and NCA college ALL, universally, allow the spotter to be on toe and ankle and it is standard operating practice to do so.

Not allowing the spotter in high school to touch the foot means the girls spitting coed stunts on a small coed team (who are usually shorter than the boys) are only allowed to grab wrists when the stunts are instable (or ankle if they’re tall enough). I hate it. It drives me absolutely insane and makes teaching coed stunts much harder because they have to learn unassisted instead of learning with a little help and then moving to doing it unassisted.
Even top 4 D1A large coed teams at UCA and NCA college have groups that two base stunts! Idk why we expect high school boys to be universally able to do it unassisted.

I honestly think the rule is done out of convenience because writing the rules to make a spotter allowed to touch the foot was too inconvenient so they just banned it. It’s absolutely not rooted at all in flyer safety.
 
My most hated rule in high school Cheer is that the spotter for coed stunts or the side in two based stunts can’t touch the flyers foot.
It’s ridiculous and I think it contributes to a lot of the danger of coed stunting in HS Cheer. All star, UCA college, and NCA college ALL, universally, allow the spotter to be on toe and ankle and it is standard operating practice to do so.

Not allowing the spotter in high school to touch the foot means the girls spitting coed stunts on a small coed team (who are usually shorter than the boys) are only allowed to grab wrists when the stunts are instable (or ankle if they’re tall enough). I hate it. It drives me absolutely insane and makes teaching coed stunts much harder because they have to learn unassisted instead of learning with a little help and then moving to doing it unassisted.
Even top 4 D1A large coed teams at UCA and NCA college have groups that two base stunts! Idk why we expect high school boys to be universally able to do it unassisted.

I honestly think the rule is done out of convenience because writing the rules to make a spotter allowed to touch the foot was too inconvenient so they just banned it. It’s absolutely not rooted at all in flyer safety.

All you have to do is throw another spotter back there and make it legal.

College can have the hand on foot because their extended skills, except in certain circumstances, don’t require a spotter anyway.

50/50 on this rule. I’ve got a couple girls on my team who just need help getting a flyer to prep level, and they can extend her without anyone else touching it, so I don’t particularly see a need for the 2nd “base.” One of them is working on a lib. We won’t ever compete it because it’s not worth the risk, but she likes to do it at games to show up another local team that’s coed. When she’s got a back to grab ankles she switches up and fulls up single base without blinking an eye. I’ll sure miss her after she graduates this year.

On the flip side, that same local coed team can’t hold single base skills to save their scoresheet, and I’ve seen them do some scary stuff with girls trying to reach, so I see your point. This is not a shot at you, because I don’t know your practice habits, but they don’t even TRY to do anything else to progress the skill.

My girls are good enough that if I tried to make the transition to coed we would have to go through another rebuilding stage. I won’t do that to them, so this one doesn’t really affect me.

Without going into a lot of unnecessary details, I asked a rules guru about changing another long-standing rule one time, and he just said “it’s not going to happen.” When I proved further, it had nothing to do with whether the rule was logical, but more to do with the logistics of changing a rule where they haven’t seen a huge need for the change (in terms of injury statistics), versus making big changes that open up a lot of other doors. That said, I doubt you see this change anytime in the near future.
 
We threw 7 total baskets all season last year as an all girl squad. Wasn't needed on scoresheets so we did a couple at practice to do a couple at a football game lol.

I’ll run a few for halftime routines to keep my girls fluent in them for college tryouts, but beyond that we don’t do them. UCA doesn’t look for them and now USA doesn’t either.
 
I’ll run a few for halftime routines to keep my girls fluent in them for college tryouts, but beyond that we don’t do them. UCA doesn’t look for them and now USA doesn’t either.

How do you get mats on and off the basketball floor quickly enough to satisfy your AD?

That’s why we don’t ever do our comp routine at Games, can’t get mats off the floor fast enough to keep AD and officials happy.
 
How do you get mats on and off the basketball floor quickly enough to satisfy your AD?

That’s why we don’t ever do our comp routine at Games, can’t get mats off the floor fast enough to keep AD and officials happy.

We don’t do them for basketball. Just football. We also don’t have the time to schlep the mats out for basketball games. Plus I can’t imagine getting them out for anything other than practice to be honest. The girls would probably revolt.

It’s funny, though: in my day when it was time to put away the mats after practice, we always fought to be one of the ones that got the rip off the tape and roll it. To this day — at least among my team — that’s still the most desired role. Probably because it’s the least amount of work. Some things never change.
 
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It’s funny, though: in my day when it was time to put away the mats after practice, we always fought to be one of the ones that got the rip off the tape and roll it. To this day — at least among my team — that’s still the most desired role. Probably because it’s the least amount of work. Some things never change.

I won the "velcro" award in college, my friend and I were always on it.
 
I was always the one rolling tape, I would get lazy after practice and not wanna roll mats.

It’s funny how much of a different mindset one simple act by a coach can do about getting those things done.

Rolling mats within our program has become a rite of passage. I used to get sick of seeing half-rolled, thrown in the corner mats, so one day I decided that only the juniors and seniors were allowed to roll mats because “they’re the ones who do it correctly.”

Now as kids get older in the program it’s almost become one of the responsibilities they look forward to being awarded.
 
It’s funny how much of a different mindset one simple act by a coach can do about getting those things done.

Rolling mats within our program has become a rite of passage. I used to get sick of seeing half-rolled, thrown in the corner mats, so one day I decided that only the juniors and seniors were allowed to roll mats because “they’re the ones who do it correctly.”

Now as kids get older in the program it’s almost become one of the responsibilities they look forward to being awarded.

We sometimes would have mat races by stunt group with whoever rolled the fastest (and neatest) would be able to leave before everyone else. Those were always fun, especially rushing to tuck the first fold right. I do know nowadays they have those easy roll mats, but we had the thick ones that took forever to push up vertically.
 
We sometimes would have mat races by stunt group with whoever rolled the fastest (and neatest) would be able to leave before everyone else. Those were always fun, especially rushing to tuck the first fold right. I do know nowadays they have those easy roll mats, but we had the thick ones that took forever to push up vertically.
I always wanted to be the one to sit on the end while everyone pushed up LOL. Memories.
 
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