All-star cheerleading is different than school cheerleading in many different ways. Traditional cheer as many people know it is focused on being on the sidelines, with the main goal being to promote team spirit for a more traditional sport (such as football). This type of well-known cheerleading focuses on cheers, chants, and team spirit mixed with skills to provide entertainment to the crowd at sporting events. In recent years, traditional cheerleading teams have started to add a competitive aspect to their programs, taking a skill-based music routine mixed with a half time like cheer performed in front of other teams and judges. In our area, most opportunities for joining a cheerleading team are not available until high school, if at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All-Star cheerleading, however, is independent of other sports, with our main goal being competition within our own division against other like teams. Our focus is on building skills, tumbling, jumps, dance, and showmanship. We have 7 different levels to choose from which allows us to assure a safe learning progression for our athletes while they continue to grow physically and emotionally. We’ll break it down a bit more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the time comes for tryouts, we choose to think of that process more as placements. For us, there is usually a team for everyone, no matter the skill level. Unlike traditional cheer tryouts where there are normally only one maybe two teams for the highest skilled athletes, we are grateful to be building different teams for all levels and age groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t think tryouts, think a larger evaluation process based on multiple factors. Our placements happen throughout the month of May at up to eight practices with certified coaches. There are four days dedicated to jumps\/tumbling skills and four days dedicated to building skills. This gives new athletes a chance to learn the sport a bit before officially starting while also focusing on allowing veteran athletes the opportunity to increase and polish their current skillets. But our favorite part of this placement process is the initial team building that happens in those first weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Ideal, our first step in creating teams is age-based. We take all of our candidates and split them into groups based on the top age of each division. For example, the youth age division is 11 and under, and the mini age division is 8 and under – so all athletes 9-11 get originally put in our “youth” bucket.
The next step in team placements is to review physical skills and abilities. We look at which building and tumbling skills kids have and make an effort to build out the teams to be the most successful. On our score sheet, building is worth the most points and is needed by 100% of the participants in one day or another.
The last consideration is mental and social capabilities. Different teams require a different pace of skill, level of dedication, and mental toughness than others. Our main focus is for athletes to have a positive experience and grow as individuals. Being placed on a team of like-minded and motivated athletes allows us to help foster success throughout the season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once teams are set, our season begins in June! The elite all-star season begins in June and goes through March. These teams practice twice a week. The first two months focus on team and skill-building. Choreography is taught in August and we start competing in October. Throughout the rest of the season, we consistently make changes to the routine to add confidence, difficulty, and to better hit our routines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our sport doesn’t have a bench, and every athlete is vital to a successful and efficient practice. While we do not have 100% participation in all sections, we do need our kids to constantly be working and improving throughout the season. Athletes are encouraged to put in work outside of practice, attend classes and participate in open gym. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, All-Star is a unique sport that offers kids the opportunity to increase body control, awareness, and strength while developing teamwork, problem-solving skills and learning to face adversity. We love the way that the sport allows athletes the ability to be multifaceted, train in multiple areas of expertise, and develop life skills that will be vital to their success in life <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All-star cheerleading is different than school cheerleading in many different ways. Traditional cheer as many people know it is focused on being on the sidelines, with the main goal being to promote team spirit for a more traditional sport (such as football). This type of well-known cheerleading focuses on cheers, chants, and team spirit mixed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceallstarcheer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}