College College Basketball Timeouts

[MissBee]

Do ya'll have an official student "fan" club? I know a lot of universities are going that route, making them a "sanctioned" student section to help keep behavior under control and appropriate. Maybe getting in touch with them and setting up a time to teach them the cheers so that they are able to cheer along.

 

[King]

Do ya'll have an official student "fan" club? I know a lot of universities are going that route, making them a "sanctioned" student section to help keep behavior under control and appropriate. Maybe getting in touch with them and setting up a time to teach them the cheers so that they are able to cheer along.

Yes we do, but I want to make sure we take them the best ideas we can before we do it. I think if we had taken them our list of 25 cheers and all the other little stuff we do they would have gotten confused. We are stripping out as much as we can, keeping the stuff that really worked, and building from there.

 

[MissBee]

Yes we do, but I want to make sure we take them the best ideas we can before we do it. I think if we had taken them our list of 25 cheers and all the other little stuff we do they would have gotten confused. We are stripping out as much as we can, keeping the stuff that really worked, and building from there.

I think getting rid of all the "fluff" cheers is a great idea. I did that when I took over a high school program. They also complained that they didn't get any crowd participation/reaction. When I saw their cheer list, and then heard the cheers (the long, drawn out ones) I started cutting ones immediately. That made a huge difference. They had this idea that they couldn't repeat a cheer ever during a game! I said "how else will the crowd learn it if they only hear it once a week???"

I think once you have a timeout routine set in place, the crowd will learn what you do and will begin to anticipate what is coming and then will join in.

 

[King]

I think getting rid of all the "fluff" cheers is a great idea. I did that when I took over a high school program. They also complained that they didn't get any crowd participation/reaction. When I saw their cheer list, and then heard the cheers (the long, drawn out ones) I started cutting ones immediately. That made a huge difference. They had this idea that they couldn't repeat a cheer ever during a game! I said "how else will the crowd learn it if they only hear it once a week???"

I think once you have a timeout routine set in place, the crowd will learn what you do and will begin to anticipate what is coming and then will join in.

Yeah I agree. It is funny... when I was here 10 years ago cheering we always wondered why no one participated and continued on and did our thing. We just assumed our crowd was bad. It is a very enlightening to me to finally think... what if were just doing it wrong.

 

[ScottyB]

one thing to amp our game cheering is we moved from having 6 or 7 coed couples and no dance sitting courtside to having 8 couples out there - 2 couples standing in the arena tunnels with signs and megs and 2 on the floor next to the dance team. Allowing for our dancers to be out courtside having a presence and yelling chants/doing motions with us. Also for the crowd to see the signs and and hear the boys in the megaphones more. Check it out in the KU Cheer Coach Skills Tape on YouTube!

 

[KU Cheer Coach]

Our crowd video that Scott's referring to is at:
KU Cheer Crowd Video for 2013 UCA Nationals | Facebook
Not sure if that link will work -- if not, just go to KU Cheerleading - Lawrence, KS - School Sports Team | Facebook and click "Videos" and it's the first video.

I definitely agree on the short chants -- we have probably 8 or so that we do, and our basketball crowd is amazing - they follow them well. Another nice time to start a big chant is during Official Reviews, because technically the band (nor piped in music) is allowed then, so we usually put up a two-sided "Rock Chalk . . . . . Jayhawk" chant.