Athletic Management, 16.2, February/March 2004, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1602/covercheer.htm
Today's
cheerleaders jump higher, run faster, and want to be called athletes.
In response, many athletic directors are rethinking how they manage
this activity.
By Laura Smith
Laura Smith is an Assistant
Editor at Athletic Management.
When Dave Haglund started
planning the University of Maryland's 2003-04 media guides, he knew he
was breaking new ground. "I'm pretty sure we can say that we have the
first and only competitive cheer team media guide out there," says
Haglund, Associate Athletic Director for Varsity Sports.
The guide
is one of several perks the competitive cheer squad will enjoy
following an unprecedented move by the school to grant it varsity sport
status. Others include access to academic support, a competition
schedule that grew from two to nine meets per year, and by 2005-06, 12
full athletic scholarships.
Maryland's new varsity sport made
national headlines and stirred debate last summer, but there is
evidence to suggest that it's actually part of a much larger trend.
Changes in the nature of cheerleading, and in related activities such
as dance, have administrators at both the high school and college
levels rethinking their spirit programs.
TIMES HAVE
CHANGED
In deciding to grant varsity sport status to competitive
cheerleading, Haglund says the most convincing factor was the way in
which cheerleading has evolved. "When we looked at what our squad does,
they put in a tremendous amount of physical effort, just like our other
sports do," Haglund says. "As an administrator watching them practice
and compete, I came away convinced that cheerleading requires a great
deal of athletic ability, just like any other sport."
At the
University of Oklahoma, where the all-female squad placed third in the
2003 National Cheerleading Association Division I National
Championships, Athletic Director Joe Castiglione is also seeing more
and more parallels between cheer and the university's other sports.
"Cheerleading has changed to the point where it does in fact require a
high level of athletic skill, conditioning, and strength," he says.
"Our cheerleaders spend as much time in the weight room as many of our
other student-athletes do, and they have an on-site athletic trainer
for all their practices."
Cheer and dance have become more athletic
at the high school level as well. "You have to be a great athlete to do
these activities," says Jim Lord, Executive Director of the American
Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors. "In fact, at least
half of the high school kids on cheerleading teams participate in
another sport. I was at a competition recently and a high school coach
pointed out a cheerleader and said, 'She's the state record holder in
the 400 meters.' A lot of these girls are the top athletes at their
schools."
Hand in hand with the increase in athleticism has come an
increase in competitive focus. "When you said 'cheerleader' in the
'70s, you were talking about people who stood on the sidelines and
yelled for the team," Haglund says. "Even 10 years ago, there were only
eight competitions around the country. Now, there are more than
100."
The new focus has even led to a new name: competitive cheer.
"Some of the fundamentals of cheerleading are still there, but the new
title clarifies the fact that we're a competitive sport in our own
right," says Lura Fleece, Head Competitive Cheer Coach at the
University of Maryland.
Since cheer and dance competitions haven't
historically been offered by high school and college governing bodies,
a host of companies have sprung up to offer regional and national
meets. Among the largest organizations offering national competitions
are the National Spirit Group, comprising the National Cheerleaders
Association and the National Dance Alliance, and the Varsity Spirit
Group, made up of the Universal Cheerleaders Association and the
Universal Dance Association. UCA and UDA competitions are endorsed by
the National Federation of State High School Associations. However,
many smaller companies also offer competitions across the country,
taking advantage of what has become a lucrative business opportunity.
"If I named all the companies today, tomorrow there would be four new
ones," Lord says.
Most schools that compete attend between one and
four meets each year, starting with local or regional competitions and
moving on to one of several national competitions if they succeed in
qualifying. In addition to the meets offered by non-school
organizations, a growing number of state high school associations are
offering state tournaments, and Fleece foresees a time when colleges
compete in conference meets. "It's not going to happen overnight, but I
think we'll eventually see a competition within the ACC, and maybe even
an NCAA national competition, just like in any other sport," she says.
As squads have begun to put more emphasis on competition, many
schools are also providing them with more resources. While Oklahoma has
no immediate plans to make cheer or dance varsity sports, it has
steadily increased the support services the squads receive, bringing
them more in line with those received by traditional sports.
"We
provide far more than we would for a club sport," Castiglione says. "We
pay for their travel expenses and their equipment, and we provide
conditioning and sports medicine. It used to be that the coach was
part-time and paid very little--they did it more as a hobby. Now, we
hire a coach and pay them along the same lines as any of our other
coaches."
Budgets are also growing at high schools. "We've reached
the point where we fund our spirit squads at the same level we do any
of our other sports, and we provide them will all the same benefits,"
says Reggie Glon, Athletic Director at Marian (Ind.) High School. "The
coach receives the same pay as the tennis or track coach, and we fund
their entry fees, travel, uniforms, and equipment."
DOES IT
COUNT FOR TITLE IX?
As spirit squads have begun acting more like
sports teams, many schools are asking whether they can be counted as
sports under Title IX. In Maryland's case, it appears that the answer
is yes. The university worked closely with the U.S. Department of
Education's Office for Civil Rights, which has signaled that
competitive cheerleading can be counted toward Title IX compliance, as
long as certain criteria are met.
"The OCR doesn't come out and
say, 'It counts under Title IX,'" Haglund says, "but given what we've
done, they have said, 'It's likely that you meet the criteria.'"
The two criteria that required the most tweaking were making the
sport limited to a set season and making its primary purpose
competition. Maryland met the first by defining a season for
competitive cheer, which historically practices and competes virtually
year-round. "We set a season that mirrors our gymnastics season,"
Haglund says. "Practices start mid-October, and the competitive season
goes from December to April."
The next goal was ensuring that the
primary purpose of the sport was competition. Maryland did this,
Haglund says, by creating two squads: a spirit squad that cheers at
games, and a competitive squad that does nothing but compete.
Fleece likes how the squad spilt has turned out. "Expecting
cheerleaders to both cheer on the sidelines and compete has become
unrealistic," she says. "It would simply be overwhelming time-wise for
them to do both. Now we have one focus--to get ready to compete. And
they're improving at an unbelievable rate because we can concentrate on
that."
Haglund believes other college administrators will follow
the University of Maryland's lead, and has gotten calls from some
seeking information. Other administrators, however, are not
convinced.
"I'm not sure that having a competition-only squad would
go over well at Oklahoma," Castiglione says. "If we aren't able to
count what we do with the program we have now, it wouldn't really make
any sense for us to add a different squad and another coach simply to
count for Title IX compliance.
"Right now, we don't see the main
purpose of our spirit squads as competing," he continues. "We
understand that the opportunity to compete creates a source of pride
and drives our squads to become better, but their main purpose is
supporting and promoting our other teams."
At the high school
level, many schools in Michigan count spirit activities under Title IX
and have found creative ways to address the splitting of squads. "Each
Michigan school makes a decision about how they want to handle the
'primarily competitive' requirement," says Suzanne Martin, Assistant
Director at the Michigan High School Activities Association. "Some have
two separate teams, and others have a very large team and choose on a
weekly basis who cheers at games and who competes on Saturday."
Only
one state association, the Minnesota High School League, sanctions
competitive dance as a sport. Some Minnesota schools count their teams
under Title IX, while others don't, according to MHSL Executive
Director Kevin Merkle. "Schools that want to make sure they meet the
Title IX test have gone so far as to say, 'Our competitive squad will
absolutely not perform at all, they'll just compete,'" Merkle
says.
SQUARE PEGS?
Regardless of the Title IX discussion,
some coaches and administrators question the wisdom of making cheer a
sport. They say it's like trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
"We know we're a sport mentally and physically, but we actually
fight the sport designation, because it doesn't work for us," says
Marge Elvers, Head Cheerleading Coach at Broughton (N.C.) High School.
"We can't be governed by the same rules as football and basketball--our
activity is so different that trying to fit us into those rules changes
the nature of what we do."
Elvers also wants her squad to continue
to cheer at games. "As a coach, I love supporting our teams, and I love
it when our cheerleaders step on the floor in our school colors and
scream, 'Go Broughton!' The element of tradition and school spirit is
an essential part of it," she says.
Adhering to a typical sport
season is equally problematic, says Lord, as the usual two weeks of
preseason practice are not long enough from a safety standpoint. "It
doesn't allow enough time to teach athletes what they need to know," he
says. "If you're practicing cheerleading and somebody makes a mistake,
you're talking about somebody falling from the air and getting
hurt."
In North Carolina, Elvers is facing a limited season for the
first time, and she agrees that it's problematic. "We used to have
tryouts and start practice for cheering football in the spring of the
previous year," she says. "All of a sudden, we can't have tryouts until
August 1, because that's when the other sports have them, and we have a
game on August 24. This just isn't going to work. We need time to
master these skills if we're going to know what we're doing and be
safe."
In addition, coaches in states where cheer is considered a
sport often have to adjust to limits on spending and travel, and can no
longer attend national competitions. "Our district restricts the number
of competitions we can travel to to five," she says. "The district next
to us has no restrictions--they've already competed eight times this
season."
In many cases, creating a competition-only squad in
addition to the sideline squad also means hiring another coach to
navigate out-of-season contact rules. "There is already a shortage of
good coaches, and that doubles the need for coaches," Lord says. "It's
one more way that calling cheer a sport means shoving it into a box
where it doesn't fit."
SOLUTIONS
Lord, for one, believes
trying to achieve sport designation is a mistake, and would prefer to
see a hybrid category of "athletic activity" created. As an athletic
activity, Lord says, coaches and administrators would accept the spirit
squad's supporting role, and concede that it probably won't be counted
under Title IX. "In exchange for that, they wouldn't get the
restrictions or baggage that comes with being a sport," he says.
For others, however, the solution lies in embracing
regulation--working hard to run competitive cheer and dance more as
athletics-based programs until they evolve to fit comfortably into the
system. In Michigan, Martin says that is already happening.
"If
coaches and administrators think back, they'll realize that this is
very similar to the situation we faced when soccer became a
school-based sport," she says. "Soccer existed on youth soccer fields
in every community before it became an interscholastic sport, and
operated by its own rules. And when you think about competitive cheer,
it's existed everywhere nationally except as an interscholastic
sport.
"In Michigan, we got in on it very early, and coaches have
changed along with the program," she continues. "Ten years into it,
we're able to hire coaches who grew up in our state-sponsored system,
who wouldn't think of being anywhere other than the state tournament
and who feel like it's only natural to have a set season.
"Now that
cheer and dance have had another 10 years to become entrenched in the
UCA or UDA system, states and schools that are just starting to
regulate them are going to face bigger hurdles than Michigan did,"
Martin continues. "It's going to take some time to pull it under the
school umbrella and for coaches to understand why it's important to
have rules and regulations, why it makes sense to have
uniformity."
Merkle believes the benefits of being regulated by the
state association outweigh the negatives. In Minnesota, it's created
consistency from school to school, encouraged administrators to support
competitive dance, and fostered stand-alone, multi-school dance team
competitions. Teams now can't compete outside the school-based system
during the season, but that seems to be okay with coaches and parents.
"Schools that are involved in our program strictly dance in our
program against our other schools, and they're very happy to do that,
because it's a very big deal," Merkle says. "For our state meet, we
have a two-day event with between 8,000 and 9,000 people each day, and
it's a big deal for those who are involved. When we took over, there
were around 90 schools involved, but we've grown to over 140."
State association involvement appears to be growing. North Carolina
launched its first tournament in 2003 and Washington plans to host one
within the next two years. "Many of our building administrators came to
us and said, 'We would be much more comfortable if this program was
driven by the state association, like our other programs,'" says Mike
Colbrese, Executive Director of the Washington Interscholastic
Activities Association.
"Having competitive cheer as a
state-sanctioned sport allows us to tell our athletic directors, 'Every
regulation in your athletic handbook pertains to these cheerleaders,
the same as it does for any other student-athlete," Martin says. "For
many athletic administrators cheer is a program out there swimming
around in a deep black hole that they don't know how to handle. They
don't know what to say yes to and no to because it really isn't
governed by anybody. But as soon as you put it on the map and
categorize it, administrators will know how to deal with it. Clear-cut
rules make sense to an administrator."
Regulating competitive cheer
and dance is also good for student-athletes, Martin argues. "Having
limits on seasons is healthy for athletes--they don't get burned out
and they can do other things," she says. "Stopping the competition at
the state level avoids the commercialism that takes advantage of
youngsters and their parents' pocketbooks. It keeps the budget for
these activities reasonable and keeps them in perspective. Bringing the
activities under the school banner also allows student-athletes to
experience the positives of an educational sports philosophy: That
sports are for kids."
MANAGING AMID CHANGE
Whether or not an
athletic department designates its competitive spirit program as a
sport, managing the squad is a growing part of most athletic directors'
job descriptions, and many find themselves facing challenges that
didn't exist a decade ago. Athletic directors are often at odds with
the desires of a coach and parents who are accustomed to the atmosphere
of a club team. The key to managing this sport, they say, is
communicating with the coach, educating yourself on the sport, and
treating the cheer athletes as you treat other student-athletes.
"First, bring your coach in and tell him or her, 'Here's where I
see you fitting into the program. Here's what I need from you. Now tell
me what you need from me,'" advises Lord.
"You have to work hard at
understanding your coach's point of view," says Merkle. "As an
administrator, it's your job to see the big picture. Coaches may see it
as their job to see a narrower picture--they're focused on their own
sport. It's up to you to communicate the bigger picture in a way that
brings them onto your side. Always make sure that when you're making
decisions, you keep an open process and don't exclude people from the
discussion."
"I have a great partnership with our athletic
director, and that started with his approach when he hired me," Elvers
says. "He said, 'Marge, no surprises. You come to me and let me know
what's going on, and we'll work it out.' I've taken him up on that, and
he's very open-minded and always ready and prepared to listen. If there
is something that he doesn't agree with, we sit down and talk about
it."
Another way an athletic director can promote good
communication with the cheer and dance squad coaches is by educating
him- or herself about the sport. "Athletic directors often don't have a
good understanding of our sports, and that can make it hard," says
Susan Putra, Head Competitive Dance Coach at Watertown (Wis.) High
School. "One of the best things they can do is attend some practices
and competitions and start to learn about the activity."
Many also
suggest treating spirit squads as much as possible like the
departments' other teams. "Establish standards just like you do for any
other teams, and communicate them to coaches, student-athletes, and
parents," Fleece says.
Glon agrees. "The key for us is treating
cheer just like a sport, and the first step is treating the cheer coach
just like any other coach," he says. "We pay them on par with our other
coaches, and we give them just as much say. If we have a coaches'
meeting, they are there."
Freeing up facility space for the program
can also win a coach's trust. When Fleece's collegiate program became
varsity, she says gaining gym time was the thing she appreciated the
most. "Not always having to work around other sports really makes more
difference than anything else," she says.
"When you're trying to
balance the demands of a lot of teams, it's tempting to tell a coach,
'You can dance anywhere,'" says Glon. "But in reality, there are lines
and spacing that become very important, so we try as much as possible
to get our dance squad on the main court."
Making sure other sport
coaches show respect for the spirit squad coach and student-athletes is
also important. "Our athletic director makes it clear that nobody is
any better than anybody else and no program is more important than
another," Putra says. "He sets the expectation that you show respect
for everybody. That has really helped the other coaches recognize this
as a viable athletic activity."
A final step is to promote the
squads in a positive way. "Get up during a basketball game when the
squad is performing and announce, 'In addition to being here tonight,
our cheer squad is working on their bid for a championship,'" Lord
says. "When they're going to compete, post their schedule on the
marquee, just like you would any other team's.
"One of the best
things an athletic director can do," he continues, "is to get a big
group of all the athletes who the team has cheered for all season out
there yelling for the cheer team at one of their competitions."
"To
promote appreciation for our dance squad on campus, we have the faculty
do a dance routine at the end of the year, and the dance squad teaches
it to them," Glon says. "We also include some of the starters on the
football team or boys' basketball team, so that they can see how
difficult the routines are."
Even seemingly small things can make a
difference. "Last year, when both our dance and cheer squads qualified
for state, our school provided T-shirts for all the girls that showed
they were going to states," Putra says. "It showed that our
administrators were making an effort to make us feel equal."
sidebar:
PARENT CHALLENGES
"The parents of dance team
members," says Minnesota High School League Executive Director Kevin
Merkle, "can be very challenging. I get more calls and e-mails from
them after our state tournament than parents of any other sport, and I
run football, boys' basketball, and baseball."
Merkle is not alone.
Many athletic administrators find that parents of spirit squad
activities call on their most expert management skills. Merkle points
to the activities' evolution as a potential reason. "They grew up as
club sports, where kids get very involved at a very young age," he
says. "By the time they reach high school, parents have put in a lot of
time, effort, and money, and they are used to being in charge."
Getting parents on board with the way interscholastic sports run,
and what an appropriate level of involvement is, takes time. "It
requires education," Merkle says. "It's your job to show parents the
bigger picture and to let them know how things are going to be run. One
of my messages to parents has always been to keep it all in
perspective. I ask them, 'When your kid is 35, are you going to
remember whether they won that dance team meet last Saturday? Probably
not, but your kid may always remember how you as a parent acted when
they won, or when they lost.'
"You have new parents coming in all
the time and you have to re-educate constantly," he continues. "You
feel like you've been through this before--and you have. But you need
to go through it again because these parents haven't heard it."
The
structure of tryouts can provide a way to get the parent-coach
relationship off to a good start. Having a panel choose the squad,
while common, may not be the best way to set the tone for parents to
respect the coach.
"The baseball coach doesn't bring people in to
judge. The baseball coach picks his own team," says Jim Lord, Executive
Director of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and
Advisors. "Tell your cheer or dance coach, 'From now on, you're going
to pick your team, and I'm going to back up your decision.' In places
where that's the norm, there are far fewer parent problems. Otherwise,
you start off giving parents the impression that your coaches don't
know what they're doing and it's okay to question them."
"You have
to make tough, fair decisions," says Marge Elvers, Head Cheerleading
Coach at Broughton (N.C.) High school. "If you do, over time, your
program's reputation will speak for itself, and the parents will lose
the 'club sport' mentality. It just takes patience and consistency and
a continual effort to treat the parents and student-athletes just like
you do any other sport program."