Cheerleading Coaching Center

The Ultimate Resource for Cheerleading Coaches

Cheerleading and Covid 19 Tips to Making Your Practice Successful and Safe!

With covid19 so many things have changed and that includes our amazing sport and every other sport too!  So, with many states planning to open schools this Fall, what does cheerleading look like and how do we make this a successful, fun and safe season for everyone involved?

As I am entering my 27th year of coaching and running the largest cheerleading after school company in South Florida with over 1,500 cheerleaders per season, I have been giving this A LOT of thought and I wanted to share my top tips with you and here are my Top Tips to use at your PRACTICE.  For my Top General Tips for your organization – CLICK HERE.

Practice Tips:

  1. Limit the number of practices that you meet in person. For example, instead of practicing 4 time a week, just meet for 2 times per week.
  2. To make up the practice times, send curriculum to your team via videos and have them learn them at home. So when you do meet, you will not have to “teach” the curriculum just review and work on formations and team integration.
  3. You can also do virtual practices with zoom and other virtual services where everyone can interact and learn together.
  4. When you do get together, try to keep your practices as short as possible. Also, make them as productive as possible and do not waste time.
  5. Maintain social distancing during practice by keeping your team in formations where there is space between each athlete instead of allowing everyone to sit together or just be in groups.
  6. Do all of your warm ups and conditioning in these formations.

Formation Tip:  If you are in a gym or out door area, try to put tape or place holders on the ground for each athlete to stay on.

  1. As covid 19 droplets are shared more through heavy breathing and talking loudly, have your athletes use their “indoor” voices, meaning no yelling or speaking really loud ( which is just the opposite of what we normally do ).
  2. So STUNTING!!! Yep I said it …. Cheerleading is so much more than stunting and now is a good time to highlight our other skills like dance and the difficulty of your routines.
  3. To make up for the lack of stunting, you can add more difficulty to your curriculum by adding ripples, poms, signs, formation changes and more.

 

Even with all of the challenges of Covid 19, we can try to make everyone safe and still have a fun and successful season.