High School Starting A High School Cheerleading Squad

[ckalifornia]

Hi!

My school does't have a cheerleading team. I know, it might sound strange to some people but where I live there are barely any cheer squads. I live in southern Ontario in Canada, and I've done all star cheerleading for 3 years. I really want to start one, but I have no idea where to begin. I feel like our school really needs this. Our school lacks school spirit and we have a pretty solid football team, but we can be better if our school had more spirit!

My school has had a "spirit squad," in the past years but no one took that seriously, but now I know that more than half the girls and even some guys in my school are willing to tryout for cheerleading. I know about two high school cheerleading teams but they are competitive. I have teachers that are willing to supervise and "coach" us, and they want it to be a non-competitive and just a squad for cheering at sporting events/pep rallies, etc. We really have no idea if the teachers need a special licence to coach us, and if our school board will allow us to create a team. We want there to be minimal tumbling and basic stunts such as shoulder sits, libs, and elevators. We also need to think of uniforms, and how to raise money for them.
Remember, we do not want to compete with other schools, we just want to cheer our school teams on!

So really the main questions are:
Do the supervisors/coaches need a license and if so, how do they get them?
How to get the school board and our principals to agree to this?
What events do we cheer at besides football games? (My school only has a basketball, football, soccer, volleyball, and hockey teams)

Please, if someone could help me and answer my questions I'd be more than grateful!
Thank you. x

 

[cheerforeverever]

Hi!
So really the main questions are:
Do the supervisors/coaches need a license and if so, how do they get them?
How to get the school board and our principals to agree to this?
What events do we cheer at besides football games? (My school only has a basketball, football, soccer, volleyball, and hockey teams)

Please, if someone could help me and answer my questions I'd be more than grateful!
Thank you. x

Q: Do the supervisors/coaches need a license and if so, how do they get them?
A: I'm not 100% certain about Canada, but most locations in the US just require the sponsor to be certified to teach. Much of the specific regulations depend on your school district and location however. I would suggest having the supervisors get certification through the online AACCA/NHSF courses though : Cheer safety course goes online
It's better legally to have some courses under their belt so that they are aware of the safety rules and basics of coaching cheerleading. The license that most places require for coaching any sport of activity for school however is first aid & CPR training. Check with the school to see if they do Red Cross training, etc. for certification.

Side note: Here are some webinars for coaches such as "budgeting your cheer season" "creating successful tryouts" etc : Universal Cheerleaders Association - Where America Cheers:: HomeUCA Coaches Academy

Q:How to get the school board and our principals to agree to this?
A: Number one thing your school board is going to be concerned about is money. The more $ it will cost them, the less inclined they will be to agree. This goes for uniforms, transportation, training, coaching, practice space etc etc etc.....therefore, you need to have an action plan of how to deal with such things.
My suggestions initially would be:
-Fund raise for uniforms or have the athletes pay for their own (go for a simple uniform or a cheaper alternative such as sublimation from a local company with minimal practice costs. Use ribbon or a plain color bow to save costs. One plain screen printed T to wear for events where you need to match, but no required practice wear.)
-Start by only cheering for home games. No transport costs. (If they like you enough, they will think about getting a bus set up for you to go places to support the teams in following seasons)
-Have a sponsor & work together to perfect basic visual skills/routines plus ideas for school spirit rather than shelling out tons of extra money for coaching
-Practice outside when weather is good. Practice indoors in a facility that does not conflict with other sports during bad/cold weather (will need at least 1 mat to put out for any sort of tumbling/stunting).
Q:What events do we cheer at besides football games? (My school only has a basketball, football, soccer, volleyball, and hockey teams)
A: Cheer for a main sport each season (Fall/Winter vs. Winter/Spring) & then go to select games from the other sports such as big rival games or playoffs. Most schools in the US do Football games in Fall semester & then Basketball in Spring semester (2 games per week usually because 1 boys game and 1 girls team game). Additionally, since you will probably only start out with one team (Varsity), you will need to decide if you are going to only cheer for Varsity games, or if you will also cheer for select games on lower/younger levels.

Additional things you will need to have planned (the school board will most likely ask about them):
-Emergency Action Plan/Risk Management (i.e. what is the protocol for an injury/emergency? Do you have a form for participants & parents to sign so that legally the school wont be sued for injury?)
-Tryout procedure (how will tryouts run? Who will judge? What is the judging criteria?)
*pick a UCA or NCA tryout sheet , then get college cheerleaders, coaches from cheer camp companies or gyms that are not affiliated with any of the potential cheerleaders trying out to be judges. The coach/sponsor should typically not be a judge so as to prevent bias from past years*
-Fundraising (how will you plan to get the money to purchase mats, uniforms, etc.?)
-General idea of your calendar/schedule for year (how many practices per week? how many games to cheer at per week? fundraising, community service, community events, etc. you plan to participate in. Basically a general skeleton of your program's participation)
-How it would be beneficial to the school & community to have the team (what are your ideas to raise attendance & spirit at sports events? how will you better the spirit? need concrete ideas for change that require minimal $ to do)


Side note: This site is a good resource for new cheer coaches/programs to get ideas: Oak Harbor Educational Cheerleading

 

[BrettMiddleton]

You just got some REALLY good and detailed info, there's not much else that needs to be added. The part about schools being primarily concerned with budget is absolutely right, you need to show that A. The cheerleading squad will not cost much to the school and B. It will enhance the athletics programs and encourage attendance.

I recommend beginning the budget presentation by discussing the uniform cycle, you don't need to buy uniforms for a school every year. Often schools will rotate every 3-5 years to keep up with trends and avoid excessive wear, so present it this way; if you have 15 cheerleaders sign up and the uniforms you select cost $100 each instead of telling the school uniform costs are $1500, the cost is $500 per year (if you do a three year rotation) and detail a plan of action to raise just $500 per year during fundraisers. The school will be much more likely to approve.

B. is pretty easy, just be fun and straightforward. If you are excited about it they will be too.

Good luck!

 

[Cheer-sessed]

Question 1.
I don't believe so, the coach for our Dance team doesn't but then it's not technically part of our school we just do Varsity Half time so sorry not sure :/

Question 2.
I would make sort of a petition: Get a exact list of the people willing to join, tell them or make a power point about how this will increase the crowd attendance and school spirit. Also include a budget slide. Tell them why you think the school needs a cheer squad

Question 3.
Probably : Basketball, Football, Soccer, and maybe volleyball and hockey.


Hope this helps !


- stay fierce

 

[maaandyx]

to add to these responses, I suggest in order to get your school board/principal to agree be on board with this, I highly suggest you 1) do what they said and have a plan for money bc it is a big factor 2) have as many people there as you can with you. At my school if we really want to push for a new team to form, we get as many people as possible to show up to the school board meetings, to persuade them to agree to whatever we want to happen(at the time we were pushing for a girls lacrosse team) it really helped having people show up and it also hurt when people didn't show up. If the school board can't see how many people actually want this then they won't really want it to happen. You have to show them that the people want this and you have other people on board willing to help.
As far as fundraising goes to fundraise for whatever you need I have several ideas, my school doesn't fund for anything besides our uniforms, so everything we either have to raise ourselves or pay for it out of pocket. So we do lots of fundraiser every year, if you want some ideas here's some that you can do.
1. Sell chocolate- we fundraiser but selling Gertrude hawk chocolate, it went through the actually company so we well their chocolate for them and then get a portion of the money back after selling it. We sold serval boxes a year, technically we weren't aloud to sell in school bc of health violations but we did it anyway bc kids even teachers love chocolate.
2. We had local pasta dinners- for the general public, people come and pay for you to cook them pasta and you fundraise that way
3. Have a bake sale- you can do this before games start and even when games start to raise more money
4. At local fairs we had booths to raise money- we only did this once this past summer but it was a hit, we did a dunk-a-cheerleader and people loves it I mean who wouldn't want to dunk a cheerleader or anyone in general. Hahah
5. Offer classes for little kids- teach them cheerleading basics for a low price it could help get the community involved in cheer and make it more known and popular in the area and you can fundraise at the same time
6. Coin drops- When games start you can have moms or teachers or some one stand at door way and ask if they want to donate towards the team, or even do coin drops at local stores, of course you'd have to call them and see if it's alright to do that but some stores offer it, and if that's too much for you, some people do the coin drops where the stand on the middle of the road between the two different lanes and walk up and down the cars asking for money although I would not recommend them unless you have an adult with you I suggest at least 2 adults, to supervise and make sure no one gets ran over or hurt or worse. But they do help.


Those are just some of the things that we do at our school to fundraise, but you can also do whatever you'd like, if someone has a good idea go for it. I hope this helps.




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[lisa G]

Fundraising...Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough is good and we do a raffle of some sort (try to change it up each year). These are our two biggest fundraisers each year. Bake sales and car washes in our town do not make more than a few hundred dollars so we try to avoid them. Also because we have to pay for everything individually we only do fundraisers where they earn money based on their own sales not the group sales as some people give more effort that others.

This year our raffle was a Coach purse raffle. We went to the local Coach purse outlet store and they were having a 50% off sell on top of their regular 30-50% discount so we got a purse worth $ 398 for $ 86 plus tax. We sold tickets for $20 each and each girl ended up getting $18 per ticket they sold as profit.

I had several girls earn over $ 800 each by participaing in these two fundraisers.