Coaching Cheerleading Successfully - Linda Rae Chapell

Coaching Cheerleading Successfully

by Linda Rae Chapell

NEW, 216 pages

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About Coaching Cheerleading Successfully

Lead your squad to be the most prepared, organized, enthusiastic, and cohesive group possible. Coaching Cheerleading Successfully covers all the key elements to building and maintaining a top supportive and competitive cheerleading program.

This guide presents all the essentials you need to teach techniques, choreograph specific cheer components, plan and conduct practice sessions, and evaluate performances. You’ll also find helpful suggestions and examples for fund-raising, building school spirit, and making your cheerleaders more likely to receive special awards and college tryouts.

Author Linda Rae Chappell shares the wisdom she’s gained from more than 30 years of experience in coaching cheerleaders at the youth, high school, college, and professional levels. Tap into her expertise and make your next practice and next season the best yet.

About Linda Rae Chappell

Linda Rae Chappell has been coaching amateur and professional cheerleaders for more than 30 years. She currently serves as the spirit coordinator at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, where she directs a campus program of approximately 75 athletes who cheer and dance. She is also a full-time faculty member teaching health, science, coaching, and physical education methods classes. Chappell's national teams have consistently placed in the top six in both cheer and dance divisions.

After cheering in high school and college, Chappell started her own business, the Dynamic Cheerleaders Association, Inc. (DCA), at the age of 23. With DCA she established cheerleading camps at college and university campuses in 30 states, trained her staff of some 350 college cheerleaders to conduct the camps, and conducted six national cheerleading championships. Through DCA she also established a national mail-order business for cheerleaders' clothing, accessories, and educational materials.

Chappell has presented numerous seminars, clinics, and workshops for cheerleading coaches and advisors, and she has delivered motivational seminars at national coaches conventions.

A prolific author, she has written on spirit raising and leadership, sportsmanship, fund-raising, and coach training. Many coaches have referred to her first book, The Spirit Book, as the "cheerleading Bible." She also has supervised production of books and videos on safety rules for the National Federation of State High School Associations, and she has produced and directed instructional videos in cheer and dance.

In 1986 Chappell established a coed cheerleading squad for the Kansas City Chiefs NFL football team, coaching the squad until 1990.

A member of the Missouri Cheerleading Coaches Association, Chappell is a former cheerleading director for the Midwest Missouri Youth Sports Association. In 1987 she earned a master's degree in educational administration from the University of Missouri.

About Cheerleading

Princeton graduate Thomas Peebles introduced the idea of organized crowds cheering at football games to the University of Minnesota. However, it was not until 1898 that University of Minnesota student Johnny Campbell directed a crowd in cheering "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!”, making Campbell the very first cheerleader and November 2, 1898 the official birth date of organized cheerleading. Soon after, the University of Minnesota organized a "yell leader" squad of 6 male students, who still use Campbell's original cheer. In 1903 the first cheerleading fraternity, Gamma Sigma was founded. Cheerleading started out as an all-male activity, but females began participating in 1923, due to limited availability of female collegiate sports and men being drafted for war. At this time, gymnastics, tumbling, and megaphones were incorporated into popular cheers, and are still used. It is estimated that 97% of cheerleading participants overall are female, but males still make up 50% of cheering squads at the collegiate level.
Cornell University cheerleader on a 1906 postcard

In 1948, Lawrence "Herkie" Herkimer, of Dallas, TX and a former cheerleader at Southern Methodist University formed the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) as a way to hold cheerleading clinics. In 1949, The NCA held its first clinic in Huntsville, TX with 52 girls in attendance. Herkimer contributed many firsts to the sport: the founding of the Cheerleader & Danz Team cheerleading uniform supply company, inventing the herkie, (where one leg is bent towards the ground and the other is out to the side as high as it will stretch in the toe-touch position) and creating the "Spirit Stick". By the 1960s, college cheerleaders began hosting workshops across the nation, teaching fundamental cheer skills to eager high-school-age girls. In 1965, Fred Gastoff invented the vinyl pom-pon and it was introduced into competitions by the International Cheerleading Foundation (now the World Cheerleading Association or WCA). Organized cheerleading competitions began to pop up with the first ranking of the "Top Ten College Cheerleading Squads" and "Cheerleader All America" awards given out by the International Cheerleading Foundation in 1967. In 1978, America was introduced to competitive cheerleading by the first broadcast of Collegiate Cheerleading Championships on CBS.

In the 1960s National Football League (NFL) teams began to organize professional cheerleading teams. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders soon gained the spotlight with their revealing outfits and sophisticated dance moves, which debuted in the 1972–1973 season, but were first seen widely in Super Bowl X (1976). This caused the image of cheerleaders to permanently change, with many other NFL teams emulating them. Most of the professional teams' cheerleading squads would more accurately be described as dance teams by contemporary standards; as they rarely, if ever, actively encourage crowd noise or perform modern cheerleading moves.

The 1980s saw the onset of modern cheerleading with more difficult stunt sequences and gymnastics being incorporated into routines. All-star teams started to pop up, and with them the creation of the United States All-Star Federation (USASF) ESPN first broadcasted the National High School Cheerleading Competition nationwide in 1983. Cheerleading organizations such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors (AACCA), founded in 1987, started applying universal safety standards to decrease the number of injuries and prevent dangerous stunts, pyramids and tumbling passes from being included in routines. In 2003, the National Council for Spirit Safety and Education (NCSSE) was formed to offer safety training for youth, school, all star and college coaches. The NCAA requires college cheer coaches to successfully complete a nationally recognized safety-training program. The NCSSE or AACCA certification programs are both recognized by the NCAA.

Even with its athletic and competitive development, cheerleading at the school level has retained its ties to the spirit leading traditions started back in the 1890s. Cheerleaders are seen as ambassadors for their schools, and leaders among the student body. At the college level, cheerleaders are often invited to help at university fundraisers.

Cheerleading is currently most closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as association football (soccer), ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. The Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have cheerleaders. Debuting in 2003, the "Marlin Mermaids" gained national exposure and have influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads.

Coaching Cheerleading Successfully