How a Cheer Squad Finds Cheers

Series Summary

Cheerleading was invented by a man in 1898, who first directed a crowd in cheering on the University of Minnesota. Since then, cheerleading has become a popular culture phenomenon and a sport. Cheerleaders began as male, but slowly females, who had few offerings for collegiate-level athletics, dominated the hobby. In the early 1970s, the Dallas Cowgirls changed professional cheerleading into simply dance, removing most of the stunts and tumbling in favor of revealing outfits and choreography. In the early 1980s, cheerleading as a competitive sport became popular, and stunts and gymnastics gained in popularity for high school teams. Now there are many official styles of cheering, both amateur and pro, and local spins.

In this free video series, expert cheerleader Lucy Spain will teach you how to have the best cheers around! You will learn where to find new cheers, how to memorize cheers and chants, the importance of volume and enunciation, how to hold your hands, and the best formations for sidelines. You will also learn how to use your hands: Blades and Fists, ladies! Lucy shares tips on dressing up for the game, offense and defense, handling referees, and more. All your cheering needs will be met here!

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Lucy Spain on behalf of Expert Village. I'm going to show you some cheerleading squad cheers today. We're going to talk about chants and I'm going to demonstrate some that you can take to your squad. First of all, before we can get started cheering, each squad is going to acquire a bank of cheers. You're going to want about 30-50 cheers because you don't want to bore your crowd doing the same cheer over and over again. We certainly don't want to repeat cheers within the duration of one basketball game or one football game. As a cheerleader, you're going to be expected to bring about 5 cheers to your squad. It's okay to take these cheers from squads that you've formally been on as long as you get the permission of the coach. It's also appropriate to look through books and the internet to get cheer words. You can make up your own motions, or you can also create your own cheer entirely. Once you have the 5 cheers you'd like to teach, you're going to have to make sure the rest of your squad members can master this cheer. The best way to teach cheers is to face back to the girls you're teaching them so we don't get our right and left confused. For example, right V, left V, step, turn. You're going to want to make sure that you're ready to do them this way. You can also teach them mirrored, but that means you're going to be in charge of reversing all the movement yourself. Go ahead and get these cheers ready so you can bring them in and teach the rest of your squad."