Our First Three Weeks of Pandemic Practice

My team is finally able to practice! 

It started that we could only have up to four athletes and one coach with everyone remaining six feet apart. Within a week the rule changed that we could have 15.  We still could not stunt, but I decided we could work on all of the other cheer skills.

Before the pandemic, I was thinking of having the first few weeks of practice in May while school was still in to learn all of the cheers and routines, before even starting into stunts. Stunting typically monopolizes my practice time.  I have always justified this because it is worth the most on the competition scoresheet and it is my favorite part of practice.  However, I never liked how my teams were still working on cheers the week before the first game.  

Being put in a situation where we literally could not stunt gave me the opportunity to put this to the test - learn everything before we stunt. This proved to be so successful over the last three weeks that I think this will be something I will implement in the future, even when the pandemic is over. It felt so good to check off these items and to see the major improvement in their tumbling, jumps and motions.  Now when we will be allowed to stunt, we can focus on stunting and not have to worry about learning the rest of the sidelines.

Our goals for the first three weeks:

1. Learn all the sideline cheers.
2. Learn the fight song and a band chant.
3. Learn a half-time dance.
4. Improve tumbling, jumps, and motions.
5. Improve conditioning and flexibility.

At our practices daily we worked on:

Tumbling

• The team did whatever tumbling they could do without a spotter.  
• We worked timing.
• We worked on technique.

Jumps

• We worked all jumps.
• We worked on timing.
• We worked on technique.
• We did drills to increase height and flexibility.

Motions Technique

• As we learned the routines, we drilled motions to be sharp and synchronized. 

Routines and Cheers

• We worked on routines and cheers at every practice.
• We reviewed what we learned at the previous practices.

Conditioning and Flexibility

• We conditioned so when we are ready to stunt, we will be in the proper condition!
• We worked on our flexibility.

We hit our goals and we saw major improvements in all areas.  We even incorporated team building into our practices that kept a six-foot distance, which included games like two truths and a lie.  (For those who don’t know this game, the athletes share two truths and a lie about themselves and then then the team guesses the lie.)

While most of us are not allowed to do everything we have wanted to do at practice during this pandemic, I highly recommend to not only focus on what you CAN do, but also be enthusiastic about it! Still set high goals for your team for the things you CAN do.  This is going to give you a great jump start for your season!