High School Highschool Cheer In General

[rockymountainthigh]

I go to an average/large school- about 2500 students in a town of about 40k. We have freshman, jv and varsity. For the past few years, freshmen can only make freshman, sophomores can only make jv, and juniors/seniors can only make varsity- this has done wonders in preventing girls from getting burnt out by the time they're juniors. We have separate teams for football/basketball, and about half to 3/4 of the girls do both seasons. There are about 14 girls on each squad. I'd say about a third of us have done competitive cheer at some point at our local small gym. Almost all girls have running/standing bhs. We do not have captains, but the seniors kind of take the place of captains because they make a lot of major decisions. We have two year-round freshman coaches, one year-round jv coach, a varsity football coach, and a basketball varsity coach who is also the program head. We have tryouts in late April. Girls try out in front of all the other girls trying out with a panel of about 4 college cheerleaders who score them on cheer, chant, dance, jumps, tumbling, spirit, and appearance. Tryouts are closed to parents and other spectators. We do not compete but have done both Jamfest-style and UCA-style competitions in the past.

Our school is very "classic". We have simple, clean uniforms and wear small bows with the tails facing backward and crew socks. We do simple cheers and our coach is always ensuring that we are "clean and classy". We wear uniforms to school probably 4 or 5 times a year, like on homecoming day for the pep rally or for big games like our rivalry game. Our coach is insistent that every girl wears sufficient makeup, including red lipstick that half of us love and half of us hate. I personally love the way it looks. We have no piercing/no visible tattoos/no nail polish rules as well for games. We wear hair half-up and half-down, depending on the game and what the seniors want to do. We currently have about 6 uniforms in the program. Freshmen have two, but one is falling apart so they really kind of have one. JV has one for football and two for basketball- one blue and one white (white is only used for basketball). Varsity has the same blue as JV for football and for basketball we use the blue one and a white one that is similar to JV's but not the same.

Freshman cheer home football and basketball (boys and girls) freshman games. JV cheers home football and basketball (boys and girls) JV games. Varsity cheers all football games (home and away), all home basketball games (boys and girls) and some away basketball games (boys and girls). All 3 squads cheer homecoming, the big rivalry game, and senior night for football. JV does the flag routine (google IU Cheerleading flag routine- ours is identical) during home basketball games when the band comes and they also do pre-game with us on those nights (pre-game is in the 20 minutes while the teams are warming up- we do stunting, pyramids, dances, and cheers).

I love our program and girls love cheering for our program. We're big on seniority so as a senior I get a lot of respect and authority on the team because I've earned it by being in the program for 4 years. With the way we assign teams, there's no resentment between girls who get jealous or upset for not making a higher team. We are virtually drama-free and I love it.

 

[cheerKT]

Do any of you still have tryouts in front of the student body?

Our cheer sponsor wants to do away with this. I didn't realize that most schools didn't do this anymore.

I realized this is an old thread but OH MY GOODNESS this is crazy to me! NO WAY would we have tryouts in front of the student body. The team I cheered for (and eventually coached) had completely closed tryouts. No one but the judges, the coaches, usually the graduating seniors who were helping out and the 2 or 3 other people in your tryout group saw you tryout.

Our school has a very respectable athletic program but the girls have a hard enough time getting the student body to respect and pay attention to their pep rally performances. I could only imagine the horrible things they would if they watched tryouts.

 

[gymcatmomx2]

I realized this is an old thread but OH MY GOODNESS this is crazy to me! NO WAY would we have tryouts in front of the student body. The team I cheered for (and eventually coached) had completely closed tryouts. No one but the judges, the coaches, usually the graduating seniors who were helping out and the 2 or 3 other people in your tryout group saw you tryout.

Our school has a very respectable athletic program but the girls have a hard enough time getting the student body to respect and pay attention to their pep rally performances. I could only imagine the horrible things they would if they watched tryouts.

What are your pep rally performances like? At my daughter's high school the students have to pay $2 to purchase a ticket for the pep rallies and the gym is always packed. The pep rally routines are very similar to an All-star routine with a cheer, dance, tumbling and stunts. It's very entertaining.

 

[cheerKT]

What are your pep rally performances like? At my daughter's high school the students have to pay $2 to purchase a ticket for the pep rallies and the gym is always packed. The pep rally routines are very similar to an All-star routine with a cheer, dance, tumbling and stunts. It's very entertaining.

Well, the issue starts with the pep rallies themselves. They were right at the end of the school day and the entire school went. Upperclassmen would try to escape off campus and drive away to get out 20 minutes early. Monitors would have to post up in parking lots and turn the potential escapees around and back into the gym. So a lot of them were bitter just to be there anyway.

The cheerleaders would perform different things. Sometimes cheers, sometimes dances, sometimes their entire competition routine. Most people were respectful but you would always have those few that would be loud and obnoxious and laugh if a stunt came down or something. Just an attempt to look "cool" in front of their friends.

They have gotten progressively better. Student government took control of them and started doing games with staff and faculty and things like that. And sports at the school have improved as a whole. It was kind of a joke back when I was there to have a huge school wide pep rally for Homecoming or a rivalry game when you know they would get their butt kicked. They only averaged a couple wins a year. Now they routinely make a run for state and the students are much more invested in it.

 

[rrhhiannon]

My old school had one team, there were 30 on the team 20 on the floor. We competed as level 5 high school A division at the national competitions, but in regional and provincial competitions there was only one division. We did not have level 5 tumbling, but only a few teams had those skills. We came in first or second most of the time anyway

 

[Elsye]

We only have one team, which is Varsity. Our sideline team got cut, but we still do it without funding. We compete from December to early march (Michigan cheer), and we are only allowed to wear our shell and bodysuit to school on the Friday of homecoming. On other game days, we either have to dress up or wear our school colors/cheer shirts. Only a few girls have done gymnastics before, and the rest kind of just learn from what we teach them. There is only one all star team around here, and pretty much no one has heard of it. Oh and we only usually have about 12-15 people on our team


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[Elsye]

Also, during sideline season (football), our band does the half time performance. Our sideline team isn't super accepted, so we don't even get to cheer or dance or anything during halftime, which is sad. For pep rallies, we get announced like all the other teams; During sideline we do a cheer that the student body participates in, and during competitive we do our round one. We don't have a basketball cheering team, because everyone does competitive. And our teams are so small because my school has about 400 kids in it, so yeah.


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[CEAisstronger]

At my old school, you could make varsity as a freshman. JV and Varsity compete. Varsity is in Super Large division and JV is in the small division. To even be considered for JV, you have to have a standing BHS.


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[vannahlexis]

My school only ever had a varsity! We're in the smallest division. We have a sideline team and separate tryouts after football season for competitive. Our tryouts are private, it wouldn't be an issue if a parent stayed to watch or something. There are no requirements but its rare for someone to be placed on the competitive team without a back walkover. We have competed with anywhere from 6-12 girls on the mat with the max being 16 (Michigan cheer). We never focused much on sideline/basket ball because competitive is our thing. Sideline is practice for competitive and we only used to do basketball because it was required, we stopped after my sophomore year.


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[pvcheerclauds5]

I'm just curious where do your teams all practice? Location, what kind of mats(if any), I know some teams are in an Allstar or gymnastics gym? I don't know just wanted to know

 

[gymcatmomx2]

I'm just curious where do your teams all practice? Location, what kind of mats(if any), I know some teams are in an Allstar or gymnastics gym? I don't know just wanted to know

My CPs's teams practice in their respective gyms (one is in high school and the other is in middle school). Both of their respective teams practice on a dead mat.

 

[cheernerd5678]

I'm just curious where do your teams all practice? Location, what kind of mats(if any), I know some teams are in an Allstar or gymnastics gym? I don't know just wanted to know

Hallways or the commons. They've been renovating one gym so we've been in the hallway but when basketball/volleyball teams aren't using the gyms we can use them.
And yes. basketball practices ALL YEAR. The girls get there at 6 AM every day and practice for hours... and volleyball practices at night.
We might get a room to share with the dance team though? At some point... not sure how soon that is. But as of now... hallways/commons