Expert: Chris - 4/24/2010

Question
hey i'm gonna be a freshman in college this fall & i wanna try out for the cheerleading squad but you can't try out until spring of freshman year
i've never cheered before but i want to, i've been tumbling throughout high school though and i have a full. i'm working on my double full.
i'm just worried about the dancing and stunting and all that, i'm not sure how fast i can pick that up.
Do colleges take girls without cheer experience?
(its a noncompetitive school btw but it has a REALLY popular football program)

Answer
Julie, every school is different, so I can't promise anything. But if you have a full you're definitely coordinated and strong enough to learn the stunting. The dancing should be a piece of cake if you have a full! Dancing's the easy part of cheerleading. It really isn't terribly difficult to learn the dances or cheers. If you have a good coach they teach them count by count so it's not overwhelming. I first started learning dances from watching TRL and Britney Spears. :) Before I started cheering I would watch teams dance or cheer and think it was really complicated. Usually it just looks complicated because there are many different parts (outside groups, inside groups, etc.), but you only need to learn your part of the dance. Usually they look a lot harder than they are.

Most colleges do ask about cheer experience and tumbling experience and some ask about dance experience. Almost all of them require standing tumbling-usually a tuck or back handspring tuck. I'm assuming that you have this, or could get it fairly quickly. You have a year to learn things, so you could definitely get any tumbling would be required. Look into the cheer program at your school and look at their requirements. Then you'll know what you need.

If you have a year to learn, you can definitely learn the stunting skills you would need. If it's a co-ed team most of the girls are less than 5'4 and 105 lbs. That's a generalization, obviously some schools are different. If it's an all girl team though then you can always base or back spot so size doesn't really matter.

In my opinion the hardest thing to learn for someone starting cheerleading is the tumbling. People can teach you to dance and you can practice it in your bedroom in your spare time, but tumbling requires equipment, coaches, and a LOT of time. If you want to cheer you definitely can. If the college team doesn't work out you can look into an open team at an all-star gym. If you're interested in cheering at football games this isn't for you, but if you want to compete and learn the skills it's worth a shot. You could also try it for a year before you cheer at your college. Teams usually start their season at some point in the summer and go through April or May. It would be a way to get some experience, and a lot of open teams struggle with tumbling so another girl with a full is always great. I know my team would have loved to have you LOL. We had no girls with fulls. Unfortunately, all-star cheering can be pretty expensive. I'm not sure if that's an issue for you, but there are competition fees, tuition, and the cost of a uniform which is usually about $300 dollars not including sneakers which run from about $40-70. Almost all gyms can work out payment plans though because 90% of the kids/families in the gym have trouble paying for it. Open teams usually have a lot of young people in college or just starting to work, so they are always very conscious about money.

There's a lot of videos on youtube of cheer routines or random people doing stunts. You can look at some of them. If you type in something like NCA advanced dance, spirit dance, or funk dance you'll most likely get videos of the dances that NCA (National Cheerleading Association) teaches to high school squads at their summer camps. They're pretty typical dances that are similar to what non-competitive teams would do. I'm not saying you can learn them this way, but at least you could familiarize yourself with some of the ideas.

Try googling all-star gyms in your area. Many of them offer stunting clinics in the summer, especially if you call and ask. They make most of their money from private lessons on tumbling, but they often do stunting lessons as well. Usually if you're willing to pay they're willing to teach. I don't know where you live, but in my area there's about 7 all-star gyms within an hour radius of my house. They're everywhere nowadays. Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.