Coaches Roundtable

Part III: Fourteen coaches from eight North American gyms discuss how they make their lower-level teams feel just as important as the Level 5 squads.

CBN Feb/Mar 2011

This article is the third installment of a roundtable discussion we had with 14 coaches and gym owners at the JAM U Coaches Conference in June 2010. In this segment, we discuss what gym owners and coaches do to help their lower-level teams stand out.

Our Panel

Sean Sutton and Kara Witsiepe own Cheer Force One, with two locations in Alabama and one in Mississippi.

Justin McKeever owns and coaches at Legacy Extreme in Miamisburg, OH.

Nicole Myers-Pugh, CJ Pugh and Natalie Vonlanthen co-own and coach the Power Cheer Toronto PCT Cobras in Ontario, Canada.

Kerrie and Cary Overall own and coach at Cheer Zone in Owensboro, KY.

Ali Moffatt and Alana Potter own Cheer Sport Sharks, a network of three all-star gyms in Ontario.

Kimberly Dickenson co-owns and coaches at Cheer Express Allstars in Oldsmar, FL.

Karen Brenner and Tracy Talarico are the owner and manager, respectively, of All Star One in Egg Harbor Township, NJ.

Darlene Fanning owns ICE All Stars and ICE Athletic Center, which has locations in Mishawaka and Fort Wayne, IN.

CBN: On the subject of Mini and Junior teams, how do you make your lower-level teams—the ones that aren’t going to Worlds or making it to end-of-season events—feel as important as your Level 5 teams?

C. Overall: Last year our little guys were happy no matter what, but we did things like throwing a pizza party just for them. They could care less how they place. They just want to know if they get their pizza. Mini teams are easy as far as that’s concerned. It’s just about doing little things here and there.

K. Overall: I think it helps to make sure that your youngest to oldest teams all get good, qualified coaches. We’re lucky that we’re small enough to have a real consistency in our coaching and every practice is run the same way. There are no practices where we’re putting an emphasis on our Senior kids and the Minis are just rolling around or talking on the phone. I’ve been in other gyms and seen things [like that].

We’re also small enough that all our teams travel to most competitions together. That helps our smaller teams feel just as important as Senior Level 5, because they’re going to the same places.

C. Overall: Then we have our older kids help out with the younger ones, so they get to know each other. That helps them feel part of the bigger equation, too.

Fanning: We started as a small gym and compared to others, we’re still small. I have two locations now, looking at a third. The problem with that is I used to coach all the teams. Now people think all I care about is my Level 5, because it’s the only team I coach anymore since I can’t do everything. However, I go to other practices, and I’m on the phone with the coaches after each one, asking how it went.

We had a parents meeting and that was their problem: Their kids weren’t getting my expertise. But they are. The coaches are being trained by me and I’m in contact with them all the time. I’m not stupid enough to think athletes are at ICE because of me. They’re at ICE because they really like their coaches.

We make goody bags before every competition. You need to make the children feel special when they’re going to a big competition. The funny thing is Level 5 teams get lost on that. The little ones do name exchanges, goody bags, popcorn bags, sleepovers. The Level 5 teams don’t get all that.

Moffatt: We have five Mini teams and five Tiny teams at our gym. What’s really worked for us is keeping the individuality of the teams at the team level, which really makes them feel like they belong to something special. It’s not just the big gym family, it’s the individual gym family that we’ve been focusing on. We’ve done it through establishing really effective cheer moms for each team.

Obviously communication is important to us, but developing that sense of team and belonging is very important. So all our Shark teams have different shark names, whether it’s Polka Dot Shark, Pajama Shark—you can dress up in pajamas at practice once a month and that’s their big theme. Doing things like that to make them feel included and to expand the experience beyond the sport of cheerleading keeps kids involved.

Fanning: The business is changing. It can’t just be “Come to the gym and practice” anymore. You’ve got to be a family. You’ve got to have parties because there are so many options for kids nowadays. They have cell phones and the internet at 9 years old.

Brenner: We have a summer meeting with our staff and they get a coaches book. Our training lasts all of July and August and everybody gets calendars with a stunt fix, a jump fix and a tumbling fix for every week. For the jump fix, the goal would be just to land with feet together. That’s the only correction we’re allowed to give at jumps, because we want them to think about just one thing. Everybody in the whole gym is going to land with their feet together. From Mini 1 to Senior 5, we’re all working on the exact same thing.

Talarico: At the beginning of the year we always have to ask, “Which team is Brenner going to coach?” Sometimes it has to be the team that people are disappointed that they’re on. Then she’ll go, “Oh, I need to take them.”

Brenner: Last year I had Senior 5 and Mini 2.

Myers-Pugh: To go back to your original statement, they are a big deal. They are your future. If you’re not taking care of the lower-level teams and making them a big deal, then they’ll leave your gym.

Brenner: They know everything. They know who Top Gun is, they know who Stingrays are. They know who the bigger players are. They know about all-star cheerleading, they know about Worlds, they know about the levels. We say they’re Mini 1. That means they’re going to compete against anybody 8 and under and the hardest thing they can do is back walkovers. Athletes need to be smart about their own sport, including the parents.

Vonlanthen: We take a little bit of a different stance. Every single team in our gym wears the same uniform whether they’re a Mini, Senior 5 or on Open—that way we’re identified as one team. We have to put people into levels, we all get that, and hopefully one day that athlete gets up to Level 5, but most of them won’t. We have 24 spots for Level 5 and we have 350 people who aren’t Level 5, so we encourage them to be the absolute best they can be at their levels.

[Out of our entire gym,] we probably have 200 kids who have absolutely no idea what Worlds is. They just want to go to Cheer for the Cure in December and do really well. We try to take the focus off Worlds and put it on them. This year we took the emphasis off our Senior teams. I think we treat the younger teams like they’re a big deal, because they are. You can have a great Senior 5 team and a great Mini 1 team, and you’d better celebrate both of them.

Sutton: We actually had a bad situation end up being a really great thing for us. We have a 10,000-square-foot location and only two floors. This past season we didn’t expect the growth that we had, and three teams had to practice on one floor at a time. You do what you can with what you have, so we had our Tiny 1, Senior Coed 4 and Youth 2 practice at the exact same time. What we ended up seeing was our Seniors supporting those Tiny 1’s at competitions.

Vonlanthen: Even if the younger kids don’t relate to [your Level 5 athletes], they can relate to the Senior kid who just got her back handspring. They see that’s where they could be in 10 years and that it’s a reachable, realistic goal.

Brenner: Some people think they’re never going to get off Minis. We tell them that our point top girl was on Sparklers once and there was a time when she couldn’t do a back handspring.

Talarico: A lot of the younger ones are so good now. The kids on our Level 5s—they weren’t that good. They didn’t have back handsprings when they were 6 [years old].

Moffatt: We had some issues with our parents. For instance, they thought their Youth 2 kid must move up to Youth 3, even if they didn’t have that skill. They’d say if we wouldn’t put a child on a team without that skill, then they’d quit. It’s over. That was a real big problem for us, especially with our Senior 2 kids. An athlete may never get to Level 5, and that’s OK. We want them to feel valued and have that great experience.