All-Star Tryout Process

[SthrnCheerMom]

How does your gym do it?

This year we have evaluations this week, Thurs and Fri (age based). They will have level practices for a few weeks and then announce teams on June 1.

Curious how other gyms do theirs.

 

[DropAndRun]

Cheer Extrene Kernersville does 2 weeks after summit of free tryout clinics for all interested athletes. Last week they were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, this week they are Monday through Thursday. They are tumbling clinics.

On Saturday the 19th we will have 3 age groups (I think 10&u, 11-14, 15-18) come in for 2 hours each separately to learn the choreo for the tryout dance and tumble some.

Sunday 5/20 is the formal tryout day and they come in the same age groups and individually do one running pass, jumps, and standing tumbling and will do the dance in groups of 4.

Monday night they will put out callback lists and bring in generally 2 prospective teams at once and have them stunt and tumble together to make sure groups work. Those are Tuesday 5/22 through Thursday 5/24.

After that there is nothing except coach deliberation before we do our Teal Reveal (where they give each athlete envelopes with their team name(s) inside. That’s May 29, and then practices start almost right away!

 

[SthrnCheerMom]

Cheer Extrene Kernersville does 2 weeks after summit of free tryout clinics for all interested athletes. Last week they were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, this week they are Monday through Thursday. They are tumbling clinics.

On Saturday the 19th we will have 3 age groups (I think 10&u, 11-14, 15-18) come in for 2 hours each separately to learn the choreo for the tryout dance and tumble some.

Sunday 5/20 is the formal tryout day and they come in the same age groups and individually do one running pass, jumps, and standing tumbling and will do the dance in groups of 4.

Monday night they will put out callback lists and bring in generally 2 prospective teams at once and have them stunt and tumble together to make sure groups work. Those are Tuesday 5/22 through Thursday 5/24.

After that there is nothing except coach deliberation before we do our Teal Reveal (where they give each athlete envelopes with their team name(s) inside. That’s May 29, and then practices start almost right away!

I love that, the Teal Reveal! Makes it seem so fun and special. I know last year, the athletes were emailed a fun graphic inviting them to be part of XYZ team. We didn't tryout until later but several of our friends did and we saw them. I love when they (any gym) make things fun like that.

 

[alpaca]

How does your gym do it?

This year we have evaluations this week, Thurs and Fri (age based). They will have level practices for a few weeks and then announce teams on June 1.

Curious how other gyms do theirs.

Ours is very similar. Last year they passed out certificates with team names on them on reveal night. It was also the only parent meeting we had and it was where we got the comp schedule.

 

[BlockHead]

Out kiddos used to just tryout and get placed on a team. This year they tried out and got placed on levels. They will work together for a few weeks and get their team placements in mid July. They are supposedly going to make the reveal fun, but I don't know what their plan is on how they will reveal the teams yet. Not sure if they will have all of the kids at the gym at one time. Not sure how they would even have room for that?

 

[Nikki Moore]

CP cheered at a smallllll gym and they'd do clinics a few days prior to the tryouts. Tryouts were generally 1-2 days depending on how many they anticipated.
Then they just put their numbers on the website or mass email out the results that said what team they were on.
Nothing super fancy but then we'd usually only have 3-4 teams..

 

[DonnaM]

We did evals over the last month or so as teams finished their seasons (summit teams haven’t evaluated). We start practices tonight, with all tiny, mini and youth coming two nights, and all juniors, seniors (and youth who were on J2 last season)coming the other two nights. Team reveal will happen at the start of June. I’m not sure how they are going to do it.

 

[CC1107]

Elite Cheer did placements over 3 days. The majority of the girls there were returners whose skills the coaches and owners where pretty aware of. There was a LARGE influx of newcomers this year that required more evaluation than the returners.

Placements were open to viewing and to tell the truth it was pretty amazing to watch the process. 300 girls divided first by skill level, then by age, then watching them form teams and try things out. The worlds team was the head owners first task, once that was set those girls pretty much sat around the rest of placements. CP accomplished her goal. Elite Cheer Stars X Small Level 5. So all is happy in our household. She worked her everloving booty off to reach her goal - we are incredibly proud of her for her determination and work ethic

 

[Cinn124]

How does your gym do it?

This year we have evaluations this week, Thurs and Fri (age based). They will have level practices for a few weeks and then announce teams on June 1.

Curious how other gyms do theirs.

Our process is similar.

We had clinics by level last week. This week are individual evaluations. The next few weeks each athlete will participate in a leveled practice (possibly more than one) to gauge stunting ability. Then we bring everyone into the gym, they hand out envelopes that they can't open until they say so and then everyone finds out what team they will be practicing with over the summer. There's usually movement over the summer so your placement on reveal night isn't set in stone.

 

[DonnaM]

If you do a group reveal (as opposed to sending out an e-mail),how do you handle the disappointed kid who expected to be placed on S3 and ended up on J2 for another season? I think a big group reveal would be fun, but I can also think of a couple of kids who, even as a parent, I can see don’t have all the skills they really need to move up, but they (and their moms) are set on making one specific team.

 

[alpaca]

If you do a group reveal (as opposed to sending out an e-mail),how do you handle the disappointed kid who expected to be placed on S3 and ended up on J2 for another season? I think a big group reveal would be fun, but I can also think of a couple of kids who, even as a parent, I can see don’t have all the skills they really need to move up, but they (and their moms) are set on making one specific team.

They cry, publicly and it sucks to see them so sad. I saw it last year. Then coaches run after them to console them. I'd be happy if our gym did it differently this year.

 

[Cheerfun2]

Our old gym did the group reveal type thing once and it did not go especially well. Preteen/young teen girls do NOT do well in this kind of dynamic unless everyone is perfectly happy with everything..,and we know that is never the case! The ones who were unhappy found each other, and it kind of tainted the whole thing...made the kids who MADE the teams the mad criers were upset about wonder WTH was so bad about their team & should they be upset too? Ugh! Needless to say, they went back to posting online the next year!

Our current gym has coaches call each kid...which is probably the best way to do it, albeit time consuming for coaches, I’m sure. They can celebrate with the happy kids and explain/talk off the ledge the unhappy ones.

 

[emo_wifey]

They had individual evaluations the first week of April and announced age/level practice groups that they will be in until the first week of June when teams are announced. They had makeup tryouts this last week and level 5 tryouts this week. Practice groups are fluid, some kids are in more than one, some kids have been moved or added one, some are for both youth and junior or mini and youth, etc.

They typically send out emails to parents or older athletes for team reveals. Last year they had banners to post on social media announcing which team you made. The owner also called those parents or athletes who were being drastically moved from the practice group they had been with. CP had been with M1 AS and I got a call before emails went out that they wanted to keep her on T1 prep again.

 

[SthrnCheerMom]

Great points on the group reveals. While a fun idea, I can see it going sideways fast. I would hope that coaches have possibly counseled with athletes that maybe had been practicing with S3 but will be J2.

Our former gym made calls one year. Kind of underwhelming if I remember correctly. I talked to the coach, not CP.

 

[MightyGirl'sMom]

I asked our gym owner about this before we joined and he explained that they do "damage control" before the reveal night. This way when the athletes all get together and open their envelops there is little/minimum disappointment. I guess they can tell during the weeks of leveled practices. If a CP is practicing with level 3 but then gets moved to a level 2 practice, the coach will have a conversation with him/her explaining why. I supposed the only real surprise if whether you are on a Jr/Sr or sm/med/large team but I think they all kind of know their level.

At our gym the CP doesn't try out for a team. They try out for a level and then get placed on the team where they are needed. I don't know if that's typical of how most gyms work but it may be why the team reveal night works so well and is so exciting.