High School Attitudes On The Squad! Help?

[cheerforeverever]

There's a senior on our team that always has an attitude. She's one of the captains (all of the seniors are.) And she's a major hypocondriac. If her thumb isn't broken, its her wrist, or her ankle, or her back, or her other ankle. It's always something. She won't do conditioning but she will stunt jump and tumble. But she can't run a mile with a broken thumb... And if you ask her why she isn't doing it she says "I'm a senior, I can do what I want. Don't worry about it." And yesterday she wasn't running because she said she broke her wrist in 3 places (no cast, or brace, not swollen and she still tumbled and stunted...) And I reminded her when I had a cast for 2 months from my shoulder to my wrist. And I still ran every day. Of course she rolled her eyes and.threw me the senior excuse again... Thank god she's a senior and I don't have to put up with her next season. She is the only one with an attitude.

Sounds like she needs to be reminded that if she's "too hurt to run", she can still do LOTS of V-ups, crunches, supermans,etc. which require no impact to that wrist of hers......oh the possibilities are endless . Does your coach know?

 

[dianaasanchez]

try doing team bonding! so then they'll be comfortable with all the girls and they won't really have anyone to give attitude to

 

[Ems]

I think the only way to deal with attitudes in high school is to have a really strict policy. I'm with what a lot of people said, you give attitude, you run. Missing practices gives you a strike, three and you're out.
However, there will be backlash from parents. It's pretty much unavoidable. They rarely believe that their little angel gives such attitude and INSISTS she was sick that day. Some parents will lie for their kids....

SmileyRyleigh if she insists on not running because she's too injured, then your coach shouldn't let her do anything else, much less stunt and tumble on it. Coaches seriously have to step up and take responsibility for the team. My senior year my coach wouldn't and would let girls hide under the bleachers during football games because she didn't want "to be the bad guy" (she really said that!) It got so bad I quit. I was sad that it had to come to that, but I couldn't take another practice literally sitting around and talking about what we should be doing instead of doing it.

 

[Emma_QCE]

I saw this and I wanted to add. As a coach, I have seen kids that people claim to be "great kids" and good cheerleaders act total opposite at practice.

Post tryout this year, there was a girl who really wanted to be on varsity but besides some good motions and a cute face, she was going into 10th grade and not a varsity level cheerleader. We were thinking of asking her to cheer Varsity games and asked her to be a Varsity competition alternate, however, we wanted to see her "attitude" all summer. When we placed her, we didn't know her very well, and she was on the cusp of varsity, however, not very flexible so her jumps were clean, but not great, she doesn't tumble AT ALL, she also was a flyer but obviously had hit a growth spurt and only if I put the strongest ladies under her, it was the ONLY way she was going to fly. She has no basing experience.

Once the teams were announced, rumor was she was quitting b/c she didn't make varsity, but she showed up and rolled her eyes. Then other rumors were that she told one of the varsity girls to quit so she could be on Varsity etc. She always came in rolling her eyes at everything, etc post-tryouts. We were able to get her flying on a very very strong group and that made her happy. Once school was over, despite her telling me she had no vacation plans, has not come to "optional" conditioning or any fundraisers. Recently, based on hard work and good attitude, I made a few small moves...along w/ a late addition due to a late tryout, of course her mother was the 1st one to call and complain about "optional" conditioning (did the US olympic athletes make their team b/c they skipped optional practices?). Well, last night she sent me the "I Quit" email, which I am not suprised about and wished it came sooner (shame on me). Now, myself and my assistants really didn't have an opinion besides, thank god, no more eye rolls.... I let our Parent group know we had the roster change and I got she is a good kid, the girls will be sad, and she is such an asset.

If she is a good kid or not, in the gym, and in the little communication we had, she didn't seem like that at all after the "list" was posted. With that being said, I needed to just let it out and ask, has anyone out there had this experience where you supposedly have these good kids that are nothing but headache if they don't get what they want??

I had a similar situation this year with my team. It is our second year of high school cheer and a lot of girls tried out for the team - we only have one cheer team for the students in years 8-12 because I am the only teacher who is willing to be involved, and I take a Cheer and a Pom team. This year, we also decided to step up to level 2 (we compete using all star rules in Australia), making the tryouts more competitive. At the start of each year, the students and their parents sign a form that states that they understand that selection on a team one year does not guarantee selection in future years. Unfortunately, there were a few girls who were on my team last year who didn't make it - they had been year 8 flyers last year, because they were the smallest on the team, and some of them just weren't ready to move up to level 2, and the year 8's coming in had more experience/flexibility/tumbling/were better suited to the flying role/were a more appropriate build given the size of the bases I had to choose from (most of my team are in years 8-10, so they're relatively small. The girls ended up being in that awkward stage where they were too big to fly, but not strong enough to base at Level 2 yet). I decided to create an extra Pom team so that every student who tried out made a team. I felt bad that some of the girls I'd worked with all last year couldn't do cheer this year, but I honestly felt like they were "good" girls and would cope with the disappointment after I explained the reasons behind their placement. Boy was I wrong. I was harrassed by parents, the teacher who agreed to come on board to help with the new pom team was given nothing but attitude and there were nothing but problems. The girls thought they were better than the team they'd been put on, and their attitudes were disgusting. They even started bullying and being nasty towards the girls who had made the team ahead of them. I was completely shocked. What I found worse was that the parents enabled all of this behaviour. Instead of spending their time and energy on helping their children develop healthy skills in resilience and coping with disappointment, they chose to constantly complain and harass me on their student's behalf, sometimes in front of them!! It got to the point where there were mediation meetings with the principals at the school to try and sort out the issues.

Eventually, the girls who had an attitude problem decided to quit, but so did the teacher who had volunteered to give up her time to help out the new team, so I ended up having to collapse the two Pom teams into one, and am now back to doing everything myself.

So in answer to your question - yes - there are always going to be the kids who are supposedly the "good" kids, but a true measure of their character is how they cope when things don't go their way. Unfortunately, when we are dealing with teenagers, there will always be the potential for attitude and behaviour problems while they sort out their identity and who they want to be, and I guess all we can do is give them the opportunity to learn these things in a supported way and hope that they make the right choices.

Personally, I think I will try to run tryouts over a longer period next year so that I can get a better gauge of the student's attitudes in a variety of situations. I'm also hoping to find someone to take over the Pom team so that I can start a Level 1 cheer team to offer more places in Cheer - and hopefully I don't get harrassed again!!