Stunt Group Issues..

[CoachCaite]

Hello friends!

I am new to the cheer boards, this is my first year coaching Varsity cheer at a local high school, and I am having an issue with one of my stunt groups..
I have a squad of 13 this year, and it's pretty even mix of newbies and returners..The stunt groups I've set seem to be going well, with the exception of one group.
It has two returners, and three new girls, and the group is struggling to get up even a prep.
I'm not sure what exactly I need to do to help them?I dont' want to mix up my other stunt groups, because they've already bonded and are working so well together..
Does anyone have any suggestions of drills or techniques I can help them with?
Thank you so much!

 

[sherpamelissa]

I have the same issues with my 13 girl squad of JV girls this year (10/11 year olds). What seems to help is having them watch the girls in the groups that are working, like each girl standing behind their counterpart in the stable group and watching/learning. Also, I will switch them out one at a time during practice, just for practice purposes, not performance. So, I will switch just one girl from the group having trouble into the same position in the group that is stable. Then if that group has the same problems, I ask the girls that know what they are doing what the problem is. A lot of times they can tell you, she is moving too fast/too slow/hands are wrong.

 

[CougarsCoach]

We are having the same issue with our 11-14 year old youth cheer group. We have 1/2 returners and 1/2 new girls. However, our best stunt group includes an experienced flyer with new-to-cheer bases and back spot. What worked for us is replacing ONE position for demonstration purposes at a time. For example, we would have an experienced back spot from another group come over and work with the new bases and the flyer, while the new back stood right with her and watched and then learned from her. Then the back spot would fill in, with the experienced girl right there with her. Once we felt the new back spot was doing well we put her in the group and then pulled another experienced girl to fill in for another newbie (say, the main base), and so on. We felt doing one position at a time helped a lot.

The biggest issues we had with getting our bases to get the flyer up (even to a prep) was that they were not dipping together. They are now easily doing extensions and our next issues is that they don't cradle the flyer together from an extension - but that's another topic!