Ball X basket tosses with arch or no arch? Are there any specific rules regarding that? I feel like no arch makes the whole toss uglier :/

My daughter is 6. She is currently in her second year with her cheer league. It’s a seasonal rec league through the city for girls ages 4-12 that runs from May-November. They stop at 12 since most girls start their Jr High Cheer careers by then. I was looking for her to do dance since she likes it too but she genuinely gets upset if I even consider removing her from this league and the dance companies around here are an arm & a leg, so we made the choice to keep her in cheer. She does jiu Jitsu as well which she bumps up during the off season which she also loves & keeps her flexible. Is there something else that you guys recommend she does during the off season? Or is Jiu Jitsu sufficient? I was never a cheerleader myself so I wish I knew what I could do for her to keep her cheer skills in place. Thank you.

Read a story that football players got their letterman jackets free while cheer had to pay or fundraise for theirs. Is that common? How did your squad handle jackets: who paid, roughly how much, and did they arrive in time to actually wear them?

Hi everyone, I'm actually doing this stunt thing in my neighborhood, a couple of my friends and some younger kids wanted to know how to stunt and I have stunted before (I'm a flyer), so I told them we could put together a routine. I'm pretty new to actually "coaching" and making stunt groups (note: most of them don't have any stunt experience). So like how should I set them up? Any suggestions? (age range is 14-19)

Any recommendations for shimmer/glitter eyeshadow without too much fallout or hair glitter?

Hey guyse! 👋 I am looking for a supplier to buy cheerleading socks in bulk for our team.t. So hard to find someone trustworthy!!. We have intense practices and the socks keep going missing. It is really important that everyone looks the same at competitions so buying socks one by one isn’t something we can do anymore, with our budget. I was thinking about ali ba, what do you think? What about Alibaba, is it good?

If any of you are part of a team or handle equipment orders could you share where you usually get your socks in bulk? I’m looking for socks that offer cushioning and support especially for jumps but without crazy prices.

Any sugestions. From a cheerleading sock distributor, a factory or a custom sock vendor. Would be super helpful. Please drop your recommendations below! Thanx much in advance! 👇✨

Looking for advice on my 9 year old's frog legs. When she does back-hand-springs, her legs open and she bends her legs. It's been a habit she's been trying to break for 3-4 months now and she's not making progress. I notice that when she tumbles, she bends her legs a lot. She bends one leg in aerial, bends one or both in back/front walkovers, etc. It's weird bc she has nice straight when she does extensions or jumps.. it's only when she tumbles that the frog legs come out! I'm coming here bc her coaches seem to not care too much but I find it not pretty. Thanks in advance for your help!

hi I’ve been flying for six months. im still a bit scared but now Ive improved a lot. im just really scared about extension libs. im getting extremely consistent with my regular extensions, and prep libs. but im terrified to do extension libs. im supposed to do an braced extension lib to arabesque. but imo my arabesque is terrible! any tips on improving my extension libs and arabesque.

more background info: only one of the other flyers attempted an extension lib i’ve never attempted one. so yah, and i know for sure my coach is going to make me do one bc according to her i have to put my “big girl pants on” im fourteen and have been doing cheer for only three years :3

Curious if other coaches in traditional town-based AYC recreational cheer programs are feeling the same frustrations this season (already!)
It seems like more recreational teams are becoming heavily affiliated with all-star gyms, stacking rosters with experienced all-star athletes, and benefiting from professional coaching, dedicated facilities, and potentially year-round training.

How are these teams expected to compete fairly, especially with comparative scoring?
I’m not against all-star athletes participating, but at what point does recreational cheer stop being recreational? How do we protect opportunities for kids who don’t have access to these resources?
Are other AYC coaches seeing this in their conferences? Would love to hear your thoughts & experiences.

Hey everyone! 👋 I'm a cheer coach and a software developer from Germany. Since 2019 I'm developing a cheer routine editor to simplify creating, edit and sharing routines synced on music. But in the last few years the project escalated a bit and I added some features which became very helpful for our team like playing routine music at specific sequences with counting or a quick check which Stuntteams are complete. So I'm thinking now about publishing it.

But I want to first check if it's really bulletproof and fits with workflows from other coaches.

That's why I'm searching for 2 coaches or choreographers who are willing to test the whole platform and give honest feedback.

*Edited because I used AI to polish my text which wasn't that good of an idea*

Hi!
I am a cheer coach looking at new uniforms.
Has anyone ordered from Victory Cheer?
They have been super responsive and great about creating a uniform. I just want real person experience!
I cant get ahold of anyone at Varsity to help me.

Hey everyone! I was really hoping to get some help. I'm a coach for a youth cheer group (K-6th Graders) and I need serious help for cheer choreo on a halftime dance for our next season. I'm not a cheerleader nor am I a dancer haha just a momma who loves her girls and is trying to be supportive in every way possible lol aaand somehow that equated to me being cheer coach the last 2 years.

Another coach did the choreo this year for their halftime dance and let's just say... the girls hate it 🙃 I feel so bad the coach worked hard to pick a song and create a routine (she used to be a dance teacher so it kinda defaulted into her lap). But the girls hate it. The song is outdated and the routine is just meh to them. During one of our games the other team did a routine to Ella Langley and the girls said "man... even THAT would be better..." They don't have good vibes, they're not excited to perform it and me personally i lack the skillset to redo them a new one... but I want to fix that for next year

So I'm really hoping that someone can point me in the direction of where I can get help to do a fun dance for varying skill levels (like I said we have a wide range of girls in K-6th grade across our 4 squads) with a song from mmmm this generation 😅 please please please point me the right way I'd super appreciate it.

Hi y'all!

I've had a bit of a situation I don't know how to deal with.

I've (20F) been doing cheerleading for 10 years now and am also a coach for recreational youth teams.

I've always been a backspot all my life, but was switched to being a flyer a couple years ago. Long story short, but in our recreational club everyone is welcome, there's no tryouts, no comps, we just do it for fun. When I became a flyer I had bases that had never done cheerleading and I wasn't very comfortable being a flyer with them, I developed a few bad habits.

Fast forward to now, I am with 2 very experienced bases (both around 30F) (one went to worlds level 5.2 and the other did University level 7) that I really trust and a very strong backspot who's still learning.

Last week at our practice we were just doing some basics to warm up and my left lib wasn't working at all. We tried a few times and either I couldn't get my knee to lock or my hips were all crooked and it looked like I was super unsteady. I talked with my backspot cause he kept pushing the inside of my knee and keeping me from locking it or pushing my hips the wrong way cause he felt like I was falling to one side. My bases were trying to tell me to unlock my knee and stand up, etc. but I felt like they didn't understand that my backspot was accidentally keeping me from doing such. Eventually we managed to do one but they kept telling me my leg was crooked (like my hips were flat but my leg underneath looked like this \ instead of this | ), and I really couldn't understand why it was doing that but my bases kept telling me it was my fault, that I wasn't squeezing or fighting to stay up.

Since then I saw a PT for another problem and I talked to her about this, she evaluated me and told me my glute medius wasn't activating at all on my left side, and working barely on my right side, which would explain why I've had trouble with my libs for a long time. I now have exercises to do to regain some muscle ability there. I tried telling my bases that during another practice and throwing in some context that I was bedridden for a few years because of chronic diseases before I came back to cheer 3-4 years ago which would explain why my muscle was "dormant". They then proceeded to talk bad in front of me while the whole team was in circle chatting, saying I was just making up stupid excuses and that I thought I was better than everyone else cause I also coach (mind you, one of them I coach with and the other one has coached me before I became chronically ill in 2019).

I know I can't help with what other people think of me, but I really feel like this has affected my trust towards them and I don't know how to deal with that. The year just started and I can't help but feel resentment over what happened. I feel like I should talk to my coach about it, but she's best friends with one of my bases so I'm afraid she'll side with her...

I really needed to rant as I feel there's no one I can talk to about this, but I am also desperate for advice if someone had a similar situation happen to them.

Thanks for reading me, and thanks in advance if you have advice ❤️

Hey all! I was wondering if anyone had any pointers for classic grip full ups and full arounds (both LTH and HTH)? Or any drills that will help? My athletes have been working on them for about two weeks now because they’re in our competition routine, but we keep running into similar if not the same problems! And we give the same corrections several times but there might be a mind to execution disconnect on the skills🤔

- Flyer isn’t turned all the way around by the time foot/ankle is caught, or by the time she’s settled to get grabbed (both)
- not very “snappy” or sharp turning (full around)
- main base keeps pulling flyers foot into hyperspace on the turn (full around)

Just to name a few! Also if there’s any coaching tips to give to flyers to potentially help with the skill? Both of us coaches are side/main bases so we aren’t entirely sure how to give stronger coaching/corrections and suggestions other than “ankles together” and we want to have all parts work together and understand their job better! And potentially get another perspective on the matter, anything helps!

I'm having trouble finding resources that detail exactly what Game Day competition entails. The other coach and I are completely new to competition cheer. We are working with 7th and 8th graders in a school. Would anyone be able to share insight for how the routine should be structured? (with definitions of what each thing is - we are really confused)

Not sure what to actually call this. I coach a youth sideline team. They've seen that the high school team has some songs the band does they have a specific dance for and they'd like to have a few. Some examples of the ones the HS has are: death vaders theme, hey baby, that kind of thing. Any ideas for cute, catchy songs we can play for 15-20 seconds and do a little choreographed movement to? Thanks!

Hi everyone! I have these custom-cut cheer signs of my teams school’s logo, and we had our first competition this weekend. One of the judges mentioned that the signs seem difficult for the girls to hold during the routine. We have one athlete who almost always drops her sign when going up into her stunt.

Does anyone have any recommendations for adding handles or grips to these signs to make them easier to hold?

I have a 4 year old daughter who has recently got into gymnastics, shes been driving me crazy from the age of 3 with this, trying to do flips on a trampoline and balancing so I thought to myself, OK shes going gymnastics, So I signed her up for a class twice a week, drive her there, buy her all the clothing and some equipment to practice at home. Shes really good at it and enjoys it which is the main thing.

This and soccer she absolutely loves, now soccer in the UK is relatively cheap (although its getting more expensive - different story, frustrating) but gymnastics is actually expensive in comparison to a lot of other activities.

In the summer I went on vacation to the Caribbean and was talking to a guy from Long Island, he was telling me how expensive it is for his 14 year old daughter to have done cheer since the age of 6, shes was just moving into High School, he was saying it was expensive but if you dont keep up the training then when they get to high school they likely wont make the team as its so competitive. This can then effect her friendship groups etc. This was a bit of an eye opener for me.

Is it really this expensive to do cheer? and if they aren't doing lots of training (hence lots of cost) then do they likely not make the team in high school? hence the cost parents put into it.

I'm in a good position which means I can pay for these groups for my daughter but listening to this guy it did make me think, if I wasn't able to do this then my daughter would likely fall behind or not be able to participate at all.

Great to hear thoughts on this.

Hi everyone! I’m a first-time varsity cheer coach at a small school, and my team has pretty limited skills right now.
Homecoming is coming up, and in the past, the girls have done a full-out dance. I’m not a dancer myself, so I decided we would do something different this year. A few of the girls are disappointed that we aren’t doing a full dance, and now I’m second-guessing myself a little.
I asked the girls to bring me ideas or things they wanted to work on if they really wanted to do a dance, but nobody brought anything forward. So, with Homecoming approaching, my plan is to do some signs, stunts that we can safely execute, and a crowd-leading cheer instead.
Am I overthinking this? Is that enough for a Homecoming performance, or would you expect more? I want the girls to have a good experience and be proud of what they do, but I also want to be realistic about our current skill level and the time we have.
I’d appreciate honest advice from other coaches, especially anyone who has coached a small team or started with limited skills!