How to Practice a Team Spirit Cheer

Cheerleaders have an important job: inspiring team spirit. This involves not only getting the words and moves right, but maintaining energy and enthusiasm in the crowd. Performing a team spirit cheer that invites the audience to join in is one of the best ways to do this. If the cheer squad is well-practiced and full of life, the fans will follow.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Copies of the words to the cheer
• Diagram sheet of the motions to the cheer

Practice with the Cheerleaders

1. Pick out a cheer the crowd can join in on. Keep in mind what your crowd is like (eager or reluctant, quick to catch on or not) as you choose. You can find cheers at Ms. Pineapple's Cheer Page (see Resources below).
2. Introduce the new cheers to your squad. If they are experienced, carefully rehearse the words and any moves or hand gestures with them until they feel more confident.
3. Train young or inexperienced girls (and boys, if you have them), by starting with the words. If the cheer is longer than a few phrases, hand out printed copies. Read and repeat together until they can do it without the paper.
4. Add the movement. Provide an illustration with stick figures in the various positions. Under each picture write the word or syllable they will be saying as they do that move.
5. Practice the moves and the words together. The two elements reinforce each other in the memory
6. Start slowly and speed up gradually. Drop out and let them do the cheer on their own while you do the fans' part. Keep the energy flowing with your own enthusiasm.

Practice With the Fans

7. Do the words and moves together. Start the cheer slowly, but maintain your eagerness and zest. If the cheer has more than two steps, have the cheerleaders demonstrate, with half the squad acting as the audience.
8. Shout encouragement: "You can do better than that!" "Louder! Let 'em hear it in [rival school's town]!"
9. Make a joke. If your squad is confident enough, have one person deliberately mess up and make a funny comment to get the audience laughing and relaxed. Variation: have an audience member (preferably a boy) prepared in advance to join the squad on the field and do the joke.
10. Perform the cheer until the audience is revved up, but not until they get bored with it. This will depend on whether the cheer is long or short, how experienced and "snappy" your squad is and other factors. The coach decides this.

Tips & Warnings

• You don't necessarily need sports teams to have cheerleaders. Some elementary schools train a squad of girls just to inspire school spirit. At a set time the students assemble and the cheerleaders do a brief presentation (three or four cheers, at least one with audience participation).
• Practice fan-involvement cheers at a rally or assembly first. That way the fans will be "primed" to demonstrate their team spirit at the game time.
• Confidence and energy are a must. If your cheerleaders are inexperienced, plant teachers and students in the audience who know the cheer and are prepared to respond. If your squad does not get the response they expect, the result could be discouragement.

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