Sidelines Without The Cheat Sheet?

I hate the cheat sheet. Looks terrible. Does anyone have a way to work around it? I've come up with a plan for this year that has the girls call cheers from memory, but it's complicated.

1. Strip down all our cheers to "general" ones (no offense/defense).

2. Have all the seniors (we have eight who are positioned in the center of the line) memorize three different cheers each (for a total of 24 cheers).

3. Let each senior call her three cheers when appropriate and then go down the line until everyone's done. If we finish before the quarter/half is over, we just start over again with the first girl.

4. Have every third cheer incorporate stunts (so each girl's "last" cheer would include stunting).

I'm thinking of explaining it to them as such:


Ashton: cheer #1 (Let's Go); cheer #2 (Do it Again); cheer #3 (Fire It Up w/ tosses)

Tiana: cheer #1 (Come On Come On); cheer #2 (Put Up a Fight); cheer #3 (SCORE w/ extensions)

Etc.

Or does anyone have a slightly simpler way to avoid the cheat sheet?

 

Strip down to offense/defense chants? Defense chants are our best bet to get the crowd to join with us.

And that all seems a tad too choreographed for how we do chants. But I also encourage anyone to start chants, not just seniors.

I guess because we use the anyone can start a chant and the fact I encourage play appropriate chants that we don’t rely on a cheer list during games. I’m sure some get missed some games, but that’s no big deal to us.

 

This is a total teacher move, but I just bring out one of my portable whiteboards and write the name of every chant on it, as well as what we're doing every timeout/quarter break. My center gal can call any cheer at any time and I put a little check mark next to it. The whiteboard sits next to me with our back against the fence, so people in the stands can't really see it, and it makes it so there's no fumbling of a cheat sheet. During basketball season when I couldn't really lug out a giant whiteboard without it being obvious, they were all assigned three cheers and I basically said "make sure they all get called or we do a lap for every one missed". Pros and cons to both, obviously, but I agree that a cheat sheet is the worst. AZ isn't a big sports school, though, so it's very rare that the crowd will join in with our cheers.

 

Strip it down so that you don't need a list and keep it to what's going on in the game.

Makes life so much easier.

 

Nobody actually joins in our cheers. Unless maybe it's a super close game. But otherwise the kids think themselves way too cool to do that.

I give the seniors priority in calling cheers because nobody else will do it. Rookies (usually freshman and sophomores) are too shy, and nobody else is interested. Plus giving it a “seniors only” glint of mystery makes the responsibility more attractive for when the girls do have to eventually shoulder it.

 

My assistant records on paper, and I track via teamsnap where the kids can open the app and look for themselves, a collection of team statistics: chants started, jumps done, stunts done, tumbling skills done, signs used, and megaphones used.

I then give out awards at the end of the year to the top performers in each category.

Last year, our chant category top 4 was: 1st senior, 2nd senior, 3rd sophomore, 4th freshman.

The positive reinforcement and “making a game out of it” is where it’s at. We averaged 80-90 chants per football game, and 50-60 per “true” basketball game. When I put “true” basketball game, we had a rough boys basketball season that included more than one running clock.

As far the list, we haven’t had one on the sidelines in all the time I’ve coached at this school. At every football game, I coach on the sideline between the girls and the game. I call situations if I need to, and make sure we are on the ball. Our location makes it difficult for them to see the game unless the ball is in the red zone.

I would caution you about coordinating stunts to every third chant. NFHS spirit safety guidelines prohibit stunting during live ball action.

 

What about having your seniors record the chants/motions and make the videos available, so new kids can practice over the summer, when their schedules are less busy? Make it a challenge to come to camp knowing ALL the chants. My CP is trying out for a sideline team (she’s always done performance rec or all star) and is spending a lot of time on YouTube finding chants to practice so that she feels ready for tryouts-and I’m rather hoping she’s not going to confuse herself down the line....

 

I FORGOT ABOUT NO STUNTS DURING LIVE BALL. Thanks for the reminder!

 

The way we do it is we learn all the sidelines and pregame routine in one three-hour practice at the beginning of the summer. Then we’ll run through all of them once a week until our last practice, when we’ll do a whole run-through on the field before the season starts.

In the interim, I will post all the sidelines on our YT account and HIGHLY suggest to the girls that they practice on their own time, under threat of pulling them from their first game if it’s obvious they don’t know what they’re doing when they’re out there. That usually gets them into the right mindset.

 

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought NFHS prohibits stunting or tumbling only during basketball or volleyball when the ball is in play... Oops. Been breaking that rule for a long time with kick off.

 

I just reread, and you may be correct.

The specific rule addressing live ball play is for basketball and volleyball only (I could have sworn it used to say football too, but I doubt it’s been changed recently). There is another blanket safety rule that applies to being in close proximity to other participants. The situation cited in the book is that cheerleaders should not hold a sign while in stunts if the football players are going to run through the sign. So, on the football sideline would be dependent upon how far you are from the action itself.

 

It rang a bell for me too. I know for sure you can’t stunt during basketball because those rules are pretty strict and always have been (can’t stand behind the key, etc). But it feels familiar for football too. And I mean, it makes sense. But maybe it changed recently.

 

I'm pretty sure you're right. For instance, I think we might be okay because we cheer on a track, but I know when we play at indoor stadiums we aren't able to stunt during live play. There might be state-specific rules regarding football.

 

I took our cheat deer away because they take so much time deciding what cheer to call!! Honestly they called out more cheers when they didn’t have it out, and when they got stuck I gave them a cheer to call. I also let my captains glance at it on water breaks or between quarters to see what else they can call

 

Cheat Sheets?
We had to memorize all cheers and motions our rookie year otherwise we didn't cheer at football games. We were a coed team so our boys (who typically knew more about football) would call the cheer based on what is happening during the game, and we would have to know the motions/stunts to go along with it. Vets made it a big deal for the rookies to learn cheers in summer training camps. Videos also get posted on team pages during summer training, so by the start of the season there should be no excuses.

Good luck!