Diversify your Stunting Positions

The best coaching advice I can give about stunting is to diversify your stunting positions. Do not let your team get comfortable in a specific position or in a specific group. You never know what can happen with injuries or eligibility, so it is critical you are able to rearrange stunt groups the week of or even the day of a competition or performance.

One year I took my Varsity and JV teams to nationals and one of my amazing cheerleaders who was also tough as nails, became very very ill and was also dehydrated.  She ended up in the emergency room and was given an IV.  The day before preliminaries, we learned that she was unable to compete. She was a tumbler, an amazing back spot and an all-around great cheerleader.

I needed to have 16 in that routine to make it work so I had to pull somebody up from the JV team. There was no question who I wanted in that position to compete on varsity. She had the experience and talent. She was a very strong base, but was one of the shortest members of the team, which made it difficult to replace a back spot. I had a another base on the team who had been a back spot her previous years cheering. She was very versatile and one of the taller members of the team to be able to back spot. We rearranged the routine and I had the JV cheerleader base and then the Varsity base became the back spot. 

We HIT our routine!

The reason we were able to rearrange the positions in the routine and hit is because the team had experience in other positions.  Our team had practiced other positions and they did not get used to only stunting with one group.  One flyer had a new back spot and another flyer had a new base.  Two groups were impacted, but it did not phase them.

It’s going to be clear you have athletes on your team suited for very specific positions. You may have somebody who is 100 pounds that will probably always be a flyer, but still have her base at practice.  Have your flyers base another flyer with a strong back spot. Have bases fly or back spot.  Have back spots base or fly.  My teams always have to know how to do two positions.

Even if you are never going to use them in different stunting positions very much, practicing other positions with strengthen them in their main stunting position. They will gain a better understanding of what the other team members are doing and become stronger stunters. Diversify your stunting positions!