Hey girls!
I'm the captain of my dance team and lately have been so overwhelmed. We had a hard last two years with our coach leaving and a lack of leadership among the seniors. This year our sponsor is a huge help and me and the other captain work well and strongly together. The year started out really strong with us being very successful at camp we did better then we ever had and we preceded to also do really well at state. Now we are in basketball season and i am beside myself on how to keep them motivated. We have girls who talk throughout practice who don't put in the effort anymore they are disrespectful with the girls who are teaching and get upset if they are ever put in the backrow. Im typically a very patient person but i am at my wits end. I try everything being nice, friendly, strict, lenient, i try to ignore the problem, i try to point it out so i try every method and if it works briefly it some how comes back again. WE all worked so well together in the beginnning and now it is killing me and the other girls who care so deeply and are passionate about it that we have to put our effort in making the others care and its so frustrating that no matter how much me and some of the others care you can't make the team care it seems like the closer we bonded as a team the more the younger ones felt they could go off and hold there own conversation and i feel bad when i say stuff about it cuz they look at you and roll there eyes like you are the meaniest person on earth and i feel like there is only a few of us keeping all the peices glued together and the minute i fall we all will. Lately I feel i haven't been a good captain because I just don't know what to do i don't want them to hate me i try to say things respectfully but it doesn't work i can't get the point through to them and i have just been standing back and observing lately and when im not there being the "mean" one chaos breaks loose and we have a demerit system and stuff but it doesn't matter because there aren't rules for no talking and stuff because sometimes talking is fine like practice is suppose to be fun not a like you are sitting in a math class or something i don't know how to both make it motivating and fun when we have so much we have to get done in a short amount of time.....if you guys have any suggestions about any of this i'd appreciate it thanks much!
Your Pal, Mal

hey girl. i am a captain to for my team but they dont give us disrespect because whenever they do we tell them to do sets of high kicks or "frogs" and thats when u have to leap in the air like a frog and jump down and do 25 of those straight it hurts alot. if u need any other help just PM me. punishment is the best thing so! ttyl!

One thing I do with my squad is to make them do lunges and pushups in front of the entire team. That way if they skrew up or misbehave, they make a complete fool of themselves. Don't worry though I bet you are a great captain. Keep up all of the great work and just punish them as much as you can until they get the drift that you are serious. Lunges, "frogs", and my favorite, army crawls the only parts of the body that can touch the ground are your tip toes, and forarms. But don't let them push you around, you push them around. Any other help, just PM me @ higley_14@yahoo.com Good Luck. Tell me how your next practices go after you do these things.

give them lots of laps around the gym, sit them out of practice or even a performance (not the best to do but sometimes last resort) here we have a thing called M's that they hate (its running up and down bleachers that makes it look like a continuous strand of M's) the group hates em dearly and will avoid them at all cost. another thing is tell them okay if you refuse to listen to me you try leading practice...then you sit there and babble through the practice that they are conducting hopefully you get the problem solved good luck!