Ok last game of our season, we had 3 out of 8 girls. Why you ask??? Grades. Now I know kids that do sports inside of school have to keep up a grade point avg. But what do I do when my whole squad has been benched because of it?
I am so frustraited with the whole thing. Try outs are the 1st of April. Do any of you have suggestions on what to do incase this happins again next year?
Keep in mind I work at a Catholic school with about 200 kids total. I normally will have mostaly incomming freshmen, who all have good grades in 8th, but fall off during the year.
And when quartly grades post anyone who has a d or f is benched till it goes up.
ohh man what did I get myself into..... Janel.

I don't have your precise problem but i know how you're feeling. I have now dedication from my cheerleaders.

My suggestion is to talk with your girls during tryouts and let them know that low grades are not cool, they need to keep up their grades if they wanna cheer. If they can't they're off the squad.I think i'd be talking to teachers too, and have them let you know when grades are slipping so that you are able to talk with the girl it involves.

I hope you can sort out your problem.

Good luck
D

I hope I can sort out the problom also. Thanks for taking time to write me back! I really do appreciate it. Janel.

"mostaly incomming freshmen"

i'm hoping that was just a typo... because we are talking about grades here in this post.

maybe you should make them take study hall. on UCO if you don't have at least a 3.0 you have to go to study hall at the library with the coach for an hour before practice. i don't know how well it worked though. i never had to go. i went once just to see and they were mostly all sitting around talking...

Nope it wasnt a typo, cheerleading is a dieing sport in Nebraska. It sucks but its the facts. We are not able to tumble or stunt here. Some girl broke her neck or somthing, so the whole state got punished for it. The only kids who want to do it are freshmen. Its so funny because the only things that really make cheering a sport are taken away, talk about setting cheerleaders back 50 years, lol.
And its sad because tumbling and stunting are my strong points.
I am also a great dancer who runs her own studio, lol.
And yes, study halls are glorified social hours. I dont want to because it will take away from practice times, but we will have to get a tutor for them. Well thanks guys. Janel

i think she was talking about the word "MOSTALY" being a typo, it should be mostly.... unless mostaly is a new word? i could be wrong.
now, having said that, i dont think that was called for, to point out a spelling error, kinda childish dont ya think?
as far as the team not keeping their grades up, that is a must. i always had to do it, tons of homework, practice and then i took piano, voice, gymnastics and dance on top of all of that. they have to work and want it. tell them this.
as far as the tumbling and stunts, you can still cheer without it. it is sad that the one girl broke her neck, how did she do it?
well hope your team gets their act together!!!

Wow I guess I did have a typo, lol. I didnt even notice it. I think she was a college cheerleader from Nebraska State. I heard she was going into a stunt and fell backwards. She is now parilized, but she didnt die. But as far as the whole state being punised for her mistake, its crappy. I bet lots of football players get injured and they havent banned tackle football, I dont know, it just makes me mad. I think my sister said it well, she said "everything I hate about cheerleading is all you guys do." She dosnt like cheering much and most cheerleaders, like my sister arnt REALLY great at dancing. And basically thats all we do. Anyways thanks for letting me know about that RUDE girl. I guess I am kinda ditzy, Janel.

how was it rude? if you're coaching a squad and you're complaining about THEIR grades, you should set a good example. mostaly isn't a word.

and neither is "frustraited"

nor "incase" (though that could have been a typo) or "happins"

nor "quartly" ....but i'm done now. point proven. not rude, just honest. if you want your kids to have good grades, set a good example.

No your rude cause that I was asking for help, not a rant about spelling. Um and by the way noone gives a crap about what you say. I look at all of your posts and Wow, um can we say un helpfull much????? All you do is critisize everyone, and post rude comments. Nobody likes you, nobody likes your little commentary and nobody gives a crap what you say. So go away into your little perfect cheer universe, and either be nice or fall off the face of the earth for all I care. Thanks so much!!! Have a great day!!! Peace.

PS didnt you edit your first post 2 times??? LMAO.
Awwww now what, you think you are the only one who can be petty
and throw out rude comments to other people. Well guess what, now someone just did it to you. Nice people on ddn are sick of stupid, petty and rude people like you. So if your not here to help us, then GO AWAY! And like I said before, have a nice day.

Actually, I (and plenty other people) have a lot of respect for what Katie says on these (and other) boards - she tells it like it is. And she knows her stuff. So don't throw empty insults.

And yes, it really frustrates me that you are complaining about your squad's grades when your own spelling and grammar is so poor.
By the way... grades AFFECT your squd, not EFFECT it.

Well guess what.... I don't. I will not respect anyone who knows someone needs help, and inturn, makes fun of them. Who the f%$k cares if I am not a good speller. I am a good coach, so why should that matter at all???? And when a good coach asks for help and gets a snobby responce, thats b.s. This girl could be an amazing person, but like I said, I read about 7 posts of hers where she makes fun of people, is rude, and if your too blind to see it, NOT MY FAULT. Sorry I can't speek nice to someone who is always rude to others. Now mabye if she is your personal friend I can see why you stand up for her. But shes not my personal friend, so I DON"T CARE!

If you're having this problem maybe a lot of other schools are. Have you considered having a coaches metting within your cheer association? If you could get enough people interested maybe you could get a petition going and reinstate tumbling and stunting... just a thought.

If that doesn't work, maybe you could switch to a dance team instead. Many people are not attracted to cheerleading once you take away the elements of stunting and tumbling- perhaps a dance team with the occasional side-line cheers would go over well.

edit: perhaps it would also be a good idea to find out from your students what they are looking for in a cheer team. Finding out what they would like could enable you to designe a team that could attract more students. Maybe try survaying some of the students, or even ask the feeder schools what would intice them to join the squad and what would not. Supply and demand I suppose.

Anyhow... good luck! I hope that things are able to work our well for you and your squad.

The point UCO is trying to make is that you're complaining about grades, yet you can't spell simple words. It doesn't set a good example for your squad if you're lecturing them on something you can't do either.

I suggest talking to the girls about tutoring to get their grades up- it's more important than cheer, anyway, and it'll keep them at your practices.

out of curisoity have you been certfied to coach acheerleading (like NCA, UCA etc.) I heard once that teh reasons schools aren't allowing stunting and tumbling in cheerleading but are still aloowing tackle football is that many cheerleading coaches have no official qaulifications to coach, many of them are jsut parents of cheerleaders, or were cheerleaders when they were kdis nad now want to coach. Perhaps something can be discussed within your state that squads with saftey certified cheerleading coaches can have teams stunt and tumble.

And as for the grade thing, at least your program valeus goods grades and know what is important. I'm on an all star team and there is no such rule. There are people on my team failing but they are still at the gym all the time and they make fun of me for studying during breaks and such. School is more important. Hopefully what happened to your team members will help them realzie that if they want to cheer they have to study. WHen I did gymnastics at a private club our coach would have us bring in our report cards each quarter and if anything was less then a C our practice time was cut in half and we weren't allowed to compete. Theres a movie about basketball that has a situation like this where the coach actually cuts the program to make them study and eventually they start to play againa nd the teachers fill out progress reports every week with things like missing homework, test grades etc. on it. That way the girls would know exactly what classes they need to work on. I hope everything works out for you.

What is an NCA certification? What do they do to decide if you are worthy to be a coach? To my knowlage NCA is a camp, and when you cheer squad goes to NCA they have a cheer coach "class" that lasts 3 days along with the camp. Or they have a 2 week program when you go down to flordia, and recieve the instructor corse. That are the only things (I could be wrong) that NCA or its affiliats do. I have more experiance than most all star coaches, otherwise the high school would not have hired me. I do not need to be certified to know this. But I do know most sponcers are teachers who either cheered in high school or college. Or they are parents. Here anyways. I guess they figured here in Nebraska if a basically pro cheerleader can get hurt anyone can. And they dont want to take that risk on the high schoolers. Even if they put the ax on that law, it turns out most high school cheer squads are turning non competive and would never bring back tumbling and stunting anyways.
So I guess it dosnt really matter if they have certified coaches all together. Meaning if all they will do is dance and cheer. So once again, cheering is a dieing sport in Nebraska. All the good coaches have moved on to bigger and better, ie: all star gyms. The pay is lousey for coaching, espically with all the pressure of dealing with parents, grades, rules and guidelines, games, comming up with constant new material, uniform deadlines, dance deadlines, comp. and the added um...coaching a bunch of high schoolers. So it becomes a darn neer 24/7 job that only pays like 500.00 a month. Its soooo not worth it. You do it cause you love it. Point is that finding someone to put up with all of this is needless to say, HARD.
We get not nearly the pay that a football coach does. He donst have any certification either. I know, my husband is the football coach. Nither does the basketball, vollyball, hockey, wrestling, or any coach at a high school level. As long as they played it sometime in their life, and think they MIGHT be able to coach then its a done deal. So if they did that to the cheer coaches they would end up loosing other coaches, cause they wouldent care enough to get certified. So anyways, this was kind of a good vent for today. Ok I think that was it. Well I guess sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and say forget it.
Janel.