Confessions from a Cheer Coach: Part One

Disclaimer: it was never my career aspiration to become a cheerleading coach. Simply put, I was hired upon the contingency that I would “take over the cheerleading program and clean it up”; basically, the subtext was: if you want this job, you need to take on cheerleading, at least for a little while. So, okay, I’ll do [name] High School a favor. When I was in high school in the early 1990s, the cheerleading coaches were either someone’s mom or a rather recent alumnus from the high school. Most schools nowadays prefer a school district employee to coach, for it reduces liabilities (as a teacher you are insured by the school district and most often have a union safety net as well, such as a million dollar liability policy in case some crazy parent wants to sue you).

The athletic director, a 6’6 former tech teacher would shake his head, grin and say: “I know, every coach should be able to pick their own team. But cheerleading’s different.” It’s different, I tell you, because it’s somehow political. Why? Because of catty teenage girls and their mothers. Being a classroom teacher and if one of my students were to try out, I could be biased one way or another. I could play favorites (what coach out there doesn’t play favorites?). I could do a number of things. Well, in fact I do.

Getting Judges

I doubt people on the outside realize how difficult it is to ask judges to come in on their own time (unpaid) for several hours on a Thursday evening or a Saturday morning and listen to the school song, a sideline chant and a half-time cheer at least 80-100 times. Finding judges who do not know the girls trying out in the first place can be difficult if you are new to the area. One way is contact other coaches in the area and most coaches rely on other coaches to help out and vice versa. As you begin to meet other coaches at games, camps, workshops, etc… this process gets easier and coaches will even team up and coordinate their tryouts so there are no conflicting dates. If there is a college or university in the area, you can contact the cheer programs and ask if any of the college cheerleaders would like to judge. Each year I usually get at least one judge this way. Cheerleader alumni who are at least 5 years removed from the school could possibly serve as judges, but if they have younger siblings trying out, that’s a no go. It’s wise to have AT LEAST 3 judges (preferably 4-5 judges seem to be a good number to balance things out). I usually have another teacher or staff member friend come in to be my tabulator, that way if there are disputes over scores, I have someone to vouch for me. [*Note: as a cheerleading coach, no one trusts you; you are always a suspect, but that’s another entry.] But what happens when you can’t get enough judges or when (this happened to me one year!) all but one judge canceled due to pre-term labor, food poisoning and a death in the family. So what do you do at the last minute?

1. If you have any gay male friends, call them and they will call their friends. My best judge of all time was a drag queen whose mother used to coach cheerleading.

2. Ask a neighbor on the block who doesn’t have any kids at the high school. Even if she has no experience with cheerleading, the score sheets are explicit enough as to what to look for.

3. Ask your mom, aunt, cousin, friend, anybody—as long as they have no ties to the school and such that students do not know they are in anyway related to you, because again, you could turn your mom against some girl trying out.

So once you have the judges, you go shopping. If your judges are sitting there for several hours, you have to provide snacks and not just pretzels and diet coke. Good stuff, no need to go in further detail. Hopefully, the Athletic Department will kindly reimburse you for the $60-$100 you end up spending on tryouts, but that’s not always the case.

Judging

Every coach may do things differently, but one thing is for sure: most coaches, if not all, “influence” judging in a number of ways. I once judged at another school in the district where the coach (sitting at the end of the table) instructed all of us to note her signal: if she held her pencil with the eraser side down, tapping it lightly, this meant: “Score this girl lower”. For whatever reasons, I’m sure they were valid, so we didn’t ask questions. Here are some others things said or done at tryouts to influence judging:

“This next girl coming in was suspended twice this year for fighting.” (=This girl has disciplinary issues and I don’t need her).

“The next girl is from the [name] family and they are known for donating funds to their kids’ activities and we need new uniforms this year.” (=This girl may not be cut out for the squad, but we need the money.)

“If you see any belly rings, give her zeros for appearance and attitude!” (=This girl clearly doesn’t follow directions where on the tryout information it explicitly states: NO visible body piercings of any kind, except for single-stud earrings.)

“This girl was caught giving her boyfriend a blowjob up in the bleachers before school.” (=I can’t deal with sluts on the team; it’s bad PR for the program.)

Or, more direct: “I do not want this girl. She’s a bitch and her mother is even worse.”

There are more, but these are the ones that stick out most in my recent memory. Judges also like to judge similarly to each other; it’s not unusual to see judges peek at their neighbor while scoring. No one wants to be known as the one who scores the lowest or the highest. I also encourage judges to write comments as well in case of a tie for a spot or if a girl is borderline between JV and Varsity, sometimes comments can help make that distinction. Some judges are positive with comments, others can be vicious, really. I don’t always know the judges that show up at my tryouts and I’ve seen terrible comments such as, “fat ass” or “looks like a dyke” or “has no body” and usually these comments have nothing to do with a girl’s talent whatsoever, but rather appearance. I tell the girls at tryouts, that appearance and attitude are the easiest 10 points: if your hair is off your face, you have no nail polish or jewelry, your shoes/socks are clean and your make-up isn’t obnoxious and you SMILE, there is no reason for anyone not to earn the full points for those categories. Judges who make unnecessary cruel comments, I know not to ask them back next year.