High School Highschool Cheer In General

[JoFTZEW21]

Hi guys, I just was curious to see how your school runs Cheerleading. People in my area have said that the way we run ours is a little weird or different. Do you guys have all levels? Freshman, JV, Varsity? Do you guys compete? Can freshman make a higher level? Do you wear your uniform to school on game days?Are a majority of the girls on the team allstar cheerleaders or gymnasts?

My school has 3 levels. We are a very large school and have about 25 girls on JV and Fresh. and 30 ish on Varsity. A little less for Winter. We do not compete and it's very unusual around her. Our whole district does not compete because of an incident that happened about 20 years ago due to a girl falling in a basket toss and being pretty seriously injured, (we also cannot do basket tosses). Freshman can only make Freshman or JV but as a sophomore you can make Varsity. We do wear our uniforms to school. (Someone from another school said that was weird and they always wore spirit wear and changed into it.) And, about 85% of us were competitive cheerleaders before highschool.

I'm just curious to see if anyone's school is like mine

 

[BuegeSmalls]

At my old school (now in college) we just had Varsity (small varsity so we usually take 12 girls and then or so extra that are on varsity but are just alternates) and JV (usually around 25). My freshman year we had a freshman team that cheered for freshman games but competed with JV. In the school district we also have a middle school team. Sometimes its combined and sometimes there is are 7th and 8th grade teams. We also have a youth program for kids 5th-8th grade. All teams compete except for the youth teams. They just do one exhibition at the competition the Varsity team hosts and perform at a football game.

Anyone can make Varsity, but you have to have a standing back handspring to even be considered. Most girls have some sort of tuck, or are close to it. Sometimes we wore uniforms to school. Personally I liked wearing it, but some people didn't so we would only wear them for the big games and then just wear some sort of cheer apparel other times. Pretty much none of us were all star cheerleaders before high school.

 

[cheernerd5678]

We have JV and Varsity, and when we have enough (probably from this year on) we'll have a freshman team. Varsity has differed depending on which division we want to compete in. This year there were 14 girls on competition and 20 total for varsity. The 6 extra cheered football games but not competitions. There were 12 on JV. But the sizes of the teams depended on how many try out, talent level, etc. If she has 20 girls with standing tucks and an additional 10 with backhandsprings, she's probably going to make a superlarge team so she can utilize all the tumbling. But if only 13 girls have tumbling then we're going to be small. Varsity competes at regionals and state, and we can compete at nationals every other year (if we fundraise). JV only competes at regionals. We have jr. high cheer but it's kind of a joke. Freshmen only became eligible to try out this past year but they can make any team.
I'd say the majority of comp this year had been allstar cheerleaders/gymnasts. I think there were only 2 (seniors, didn't tumble) who hadn't done either. There were a few other ex-allstars who were on Varsity but not competition. I think there was one girl from allstars on JV, and one ex-gymnast. We wear our uniforms to school. In the winter we can wear our warmup pants or our skirt depending on what we want, but always our uniform top. We've worn jackets with jeans twice... but every other time we wear uniforms.

 

[Paria]

At my school, we have a JV and Varsity team but for competition we combine into one team! We have a total of 27 girls, 16 on Varsity and 11 on JV. This year, we competed at 3 regional competitions, went to NCA Nationals for the first time ever (we are from California) and placed 3rd which was a big accomplishment for us, and we have one more regional competition this weekend. We do have one freshman on Varsity, however she did level 5 on allstars before joining high school cheer. We do wear our uniforms to school on game days, but if it's cold we wear our warmups over it. We have one ex-gymnast on JV, 2 gymnasts on Varsity, and one ex-allstar cheerleader on Varsity but besides that most of our girls learned everything they know from the middle school that feeds into our school!

 

[EricaElite]

I cheered up to 10th grade at school. We had a JV and Varsity, but our grading system was weird. 7th through 9th grade was JV and 10th to 12th was Varsity. We didn't compete until I was in 10th grade, mainly because faculty and teachers really hated us, so they didn't let us do anything. Our stunting was really good though so in 10th grade, we finally convinced them to let us go to CCA (Christian Cheerleaders of America) regionals. We were supposed to go to CCA Nationals, but nobody was dedicated enough. We attempted tumbling when I was in 10th grade as well, but that was a bust. We didn't get to wear our uniforms or even cheer jersey's for game days.
But I saved the best for last, our cheer skirts were to our knees because according to the school I went to, "if a boy sees your knees, you'll get pregnant" lol

 

[cheernerd5678]

But I saved the best for last, our cheer skirts were to our knees because according to the school I went to, "if a boy sees your knees, you'll get pregnant" lol

I'm friends with a girl on facebook who goes to a Christian (Catholic? idk) college and their skirts are to their knees too.... in college... i'd never heard of this until recently, I guess where I am they just wear a normal length skirt. maybe a little longer than my cheer skirt, per say (definitely butts are covered plus a couple inches), but still "short".

*I do not mean to offend anyone, and I mean nothing negative about this school's cheer program. Just surprised about their skirts

 

[EricaElite]

I'm friends with a girl on facebook who goes to a Christian (Catholic? idk) college and their skirts are to their knees too.... in college... i'd never heard of this until recently, I guess where I am they just wear a normal length skirt. maybe a little longer than my cheer skirt, per say (definitely butts are covered plus a couple inches), but still "short".

*I do not mean to offend anyone, and I mean nothing negative about this school's cheer program. Just surprised about their skirts

I always feel bad when I see other teams with long skirts (which isn't often) simply because we got made fun of so much. But when we did, it made us practice harder so our stunts would be better I mean, if you got a picture of us from the waist up, it looked like a normal cheer uniform lol

Please excuse our awkward faces.

 

[cheernerd5678]

I always feel bad when I see other teams with long skirts (which isn't often) simply because we got made fun of so much. But when we did, it made us practice harder so our stunts would be better I mean, if you got a picture of us from the waist up, it looked like a normal cheer uniform lol

Please excuse our awkward faces.

It really does though! It's just extra long lol but when you look at pictures of other Christian/Catholic schools a lot of them do this too, so at least you're not alone!

 

[EricaElite]

It really does though! It's just extra long lol but when you look at pictures of other Christian/Catholic schools a lot of them do this too, so at least you're not alone!

Yea, when we went to competition that was only Christian/Catholic schools, we saw other teams with longer skirts. It was nice to not be the only one. We would roll the top of our skirts at an attempt to make them a tad shorter. It never helped much lol

 

[MHSCheercoach]

I coach at a very small school so we only have one cheer squad for high school and hopefully, we will get to have a junior high team this coming year. I have a squad of 7 and only had 13 tryout. Hoping that now that the program is turned around and bringing back jr. high cheer that I continue to get more girls to try out. My girls wear their uniform top and opposite bodysuit than what they are wearing to the game with their warm up pants to school, but are not allowed to wear their skirts due to the length not meeting the dress code requirements.

It's odd that some Christian/Catholic schools have been mentioned as wearing longer skirts because the teams that we see at games that are Christian/Catholic schools have skirts shorter than ours and some of them you can even see their stomachs when they do a high V. Guess it's just a matter of location perhaps that makes a difference on how strict some schools are on their uniform policies.

 

[cheernerd5678]

My girls wear their uniform top and opposite bodysuit than what they are wearing to the game with their warm up pants to school, but are not allowed to wear their skirts due to the length not meeting the dress code requirements.

Why do you wear the opposite body suit? just curious we only have one

 

[xomckenzieee]

My high school has Freshmen, JV and Varsity (I graduated though) but all of them compete if they want. Varsity has to compete at Counties and Sectionals but other than that it's whatever they choose to compete at but I think we were limited to 5 extra competitions a season but I can't remember.
We only wore uniforms to school on homecoming and had to dress up on days before big competitions.
Any younger kids can make any level as long as they pass the fitness test (which is kind of a joke but hey).

 

[BuegeSmalls]

At my old school (now in college) we just had Varsity (small varsity so we usually take 12 girls and then or so extra that are on varsity but are just alternates) and JV (usually around 25). My freshman year we had a freshman team that cheered for freshman games but competed with JV. In the school district we also have a middle school team. Sometimes its combined and sometimes there is are 7th and 8th grade teams. We also have a youth program for kids 5th-8th grade. All teams compete except for the youth teams. They just do one exhibition at the competition the Varsity team hosts and perform at a football game.

Anyone can make Varsity, but you have to have a standing back handspring to even be considered. Most girls have some sort of tuck, or are close to it. Sometimes we wore uniforms to school. Personally I liked wearing it, but some people didn't so we would only wear them for the big games and then just wear some sort of cheer apparel other times. Pretty much none of us were all star cheerleaders before high school.

I guess I should have put what kinds of competitions, all teams do local competitions, JV goes to JV state and Varsity does state regionals, state (if the qualify) and UCA nationals. JV did go to UCA nationals once, my freshman year. We were 10th in the nation!

 

[cheysmomager]

*I do not mean to offend anyone, and I mean nothing negative about this school's cheer program. Just surprised about their skirts

I served my time in a Catholic high school and I promise you, our school skirts were shorter than that!!

 

[gymcatmomx2]

At my oldest CP's high school, freshman can only make the Freshman squad (currently has 16), sophomores and juniors can make the JV (13), and juniors and seniors can only make Varsity (19). Each squad has 1 captain and 2 co-captains. Only a senior can make captain and co-captain and only if they made Varsity the year before. The squads are determined by the natural break on scores from 3 independent judges.