High School Teammates

If you've been internally trying to solve the problem (other seniors/underclassman) and it hasn't worked, it's time to involve the coach. They should be informed of what's being said/done and how it's effecting the moral of the team. Your team won't do well in competition if there's not some sort of unity and mutual respect among members because there won't be team work. Going to the coach, who is the ultimate authority, to establish the appropriate behavior is your best bet to hopefully get the problem resolved.

Best of luck and keep going girl!

LoveXavii said:

Also we are spending 25% of practice working on cheers. That is ridiculous because we're a competitive squad. There are only 6 or 7 girls that are learning them and the rest of us are just standing there, bored. Last year, we went to a senior's house for about 2 or 3 hours and learned everything. We have Choreography Camp next week and that is not a productive way to spend our time.
(The last part was more of a rant)


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This I actually understand. Football season is going to come up before you know it and you don't want to look stupid and not know the cheers. Yeah, it's going to be boring for the returning girls that already know all the cheers but that's just the way it is. I think the reason your coach is making you work on that before Choreo. Camp is so you have them down and then you don't have to worry about remembering cheers and a new routine at the same time.

BuegeSmalls said:

This I actually understand. Football season is going to come up before you know it and you don't want to look stupid and not know the cheers. Yeah, it's going to be boring for the returning girls that already know all the cheers but that's just the way it is. I think the reason your coach is making you work on that before Choreo. Camp is so you have them down and then you don't have to worry about remembering cheers and a new routine at the same time.

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I understand the benefit, but it would make more sense to meet at a girl's house to learn cheers and review them at practice instead of teaching them to only a few of them. We did that last year and it worked perfectly. We are cutting out time for tumbling whenever we learn cheers and tumbling is our weakest skill.


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LoveXavii said:

I understand the benefit, but it would make more sense to meet at a girl's house to learn cheers and review them at practice instead of teaching them to only a few of them. We did that last year and it worked perfectly. We are cutting out time for tumbling whenever we learn cheers and tumbling is our weakest skill.


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Do you have more new girls this year than last year? Maybe you didn't go to someone's house because of the drama with the seniors?

BuegeSmalls said:

Do you have more new girls this year than last year? Maybe you didn't go to someone's house because of the drama with the seniors?

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Last year we had 5 new girls. This year we have 6. Would inviting them to my house be taken badly by the seniors?


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LoveXavii said:

Last year we had 5 new girls. This year we have 6. Would inviting them to my house be taken badly by the seniors?


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Ehhh it might. Maybe you could just bring it up and see if any of them take initiative and if they don't then invite them over!

You should really bring this up to your coach. I feel that your coach may have a reason for teaching the sidelines and cheers as a whole.

From my standpoint, I like to watch and see who needs help. Even though many team members are returning, he/she may see benefit in doing this at practice.

If your seniors are running the show, it seems disorganized.

Yeah I know at least for my team, there are always returners who forget a cheer or too, and the review always seems to help people. So that's probably why it's a good idea to do it all together! But it can definitely be boring. I just try to look around and see which freshmen are having trouble with a cheer, and I try to help them one on one, because some people don't pick it up at the same pace as others.

seniors Where is the coach during this chaos? I know for us, there are a lot of seniors and it's harder when they're in charge because there are so many that sometimes they don't agree on something or they say something, talk about it, change it, etc. Getting captains made it a lot better. Maybe ask your coach about when captains will be decided? That should help!

Remember, even though you're a competitive squad, games matter too. You want to look good on the sidelines! That's where you'll be seen by the school and earn their respect, along with assemblies of course, but they aren't at your competitions. You'll lose respect if people don't know the cheers or formations on the sideline! Of course it would be helpful to be working on stuff for your routine, but you might as well knock out your cheers before you know the routine, rather than working on the routine and suddenly stopping for a week to work on cheers. You don't know what will even be in the routine for sure yet. And once you do know, you'll hate to stop and do cheers even more than you do now.

For the learning cheers thing, have a senior or a returning member videotape themselves doing all of your cheers. You could also distribute the cheers among a couple of returning members. Send the video to your squad and say learn these by a certain date. On that date, go over all the cheers to make sure everybody knows them. Make it clear that if people do not learn them there will be consequences. I know one year my coach called random cheers out and we did them, and she counted the mistakes for each person over the whole cheer list. If you had a certain number of mistakes you had to come to an extra practice to work on cheers. Between now and then, work on other things.

As for the seniors, I would talk to the coach. Also, if you are already having problems with the seniors, I would not invite the other girls to your house for a cheer workshop. This might only make your problem worse. Your coach can handle the problem with the seniors.

glitterandbows said:

For the learning cheers thing, have a senior or a returning member videotape themselves doing all of your cheers. You could also distribute the cheers among a couple of returning members. Send the video to your squad and say learn these by a certain date.

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We do this for my college team, it works well!

I have 7 new girls this year and only 3 returning so it's like starting from scratch so I can understand where you would be frustrated having to go over the stuff you already know, but this is a learning opportunity for you and the new girls. Help out the new girls, record videos, and don't think that competition is more important than game stuff, because in my book it's not. My girls have complained about the same stuff and I tell them this, "if you just want to compete than go to an all star gym. This is high school cheer and while yes, we compete, your first job as a cheerleading squad is to cheer on your team from the sidelines".
As a coach I spend the summer working on cheers, sidelines, and stunting basics. Next week after stunt camp, I feel pretty confident that we will start working on competition routine for half the practice and cheers for the rest.

As for Senioritis, sometimes just hearing the words "i'm a senior" can irritate underclassman or you had bossy seniors the year before that leaves you expecting the same attitudes to prevail. The best thing to do is talk to your coach about doing team building that can put others in charge rather than just the seniors. This can help the seniors realize that the rest of the squad can do it on their own. Also, I talk to my seniors and ask them to lead by example and to encourage the rest of the squad. I tell my team often, don't rely on the Seniors to do it for you because next year they won't be here. Seniors, at times may come off bossy, but they may not be meaning for it to. Perhaps they are wanting this year to be the best possible, because what senior doesn't, and are trying to motivate and push everyone else to step it up.
Anyways, the moral of my story is...No one truly knows if they are trying to use their Senior status to "run" the squad except for them. Actions and words can be taken wrong even when their intent was positive. It's not anyone on the squads job to "fix" the problem except for the coach.

I know that a lot of schools and rec teams are required to do a certain amount of conditioning during the first week of practice. As coaches, we usually include sidelines review/teaching during this period becuase it is a good start to getting everyone conditioned and back into the swing again. Talk with your coach, there might be other reasons that it is happening different this year. Good luck

I don't know what happened, but the seniors have stopped being bossy. I think the coach talked to them in private about it. Also we just finished choreography camp and the coach told us that we need to get with our big sisters (we have cheer sisters) to learn cheers outside of practice so that during practice it will just be review. It seems as if the coaches saw the problems too and are now solving them. Thanks everybody for the advice and help!


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LoveXavii said:

The Seniors on my team are driving the underclassmen crazy. They are constantly being rude to people and talking bad about the team. We don't have captains yet and a few of them are trying to control the squad. It's so annoyingingly frustrating! Underclassmen and a few other seniors have tried to say stuff and the girls have not changed yet. I love Cheerleading, but I'm going to be doing Full IB next year and I do not have time for this.

Also we are spending 25% of practice working on cheers. That is ridiculous because we're a competitive squad. There are only 6 or 7 girls that are learning them and the rest of us are just standing there, bored. Last year, we went to a senior's house for about 2 or 3 hours and learned everything. We have Choreography Camp next week and that is not a productive way to spend our time.

(The last part was more of a rant)


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AMEN! Like we can see right through seniors facade, being mrs. Cheer until so people will vote for you. I absolutely love


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