Cheer tryouts are closer than you think and can be a very stressful time of year for the cheerleaders. This year the All Saints Upper School tryouts will be happening In the Martin Gym on April 3rd-5th, from 3:30-5:30pm. During tryouts we will be learning a cheer, a chant, a dance, the Fight Song, and have a mock tryout before the actual tryout on the 5th. On the 3rd and the 4th you can wear any athletic clothes you want but no baggy t-shirts or sweatpants and your cheer shoes of course. They prefer tight tops and shorts and tennis skirts so they can really see the way your movements look without clothes covering them. And on the 5th you have to wear navy shorts, a white shirt, white cheer shoes, and hair completely out of the face.
Ways to make a good impression on your coaches and teammates would be to always be alert and ready to go over a dance or chant. You may think that it looks better to just stand there on the mat like you know everything instead of practicing but that gives off the impression that you are uninterested and you don’t care. Instead of doing that always be going over new material because it’s good practice and it shows you care and want to do your best.
Another way to make good impressions is to smile and always be sharp and take up the room when you dance. And when I say take up the room I don’t mean make big sloppy out of control movements, I mean make your movement big, sharp, and as clean as possible. You will feel silly when you have a big smile on your face and dancing as big as possible while still making it clean but it looks really good and in the future that might help you be in the front of a dance formation and sidelines.
When you are cheering, chanting, and saying the fight song, yell as loud as you can and don’t sing the words unless you are instructed to do so. Again it will feel weird but if you are actually yelling loud it shows that the crowd will be able to hear you and when you are the loudest one yelling the judges eyes will automatically focus on you.
Now here are some tips for actually learning the dances, cheers, chants, and the Fight Song. When you are on the mat and they give you some time to get in a group and practice, take it. The more you practice it will pay off trust me. It is really embarrassing if you mess up and you won’t have another chance to redo it. And the weeks leading up to tryouts maybe find a cheer gym and get some lessons on things you struggle with like jumps and tumbling. Also stretch because you don’t have to be flexible but it really does help a lot.
When you go to the meetings before tryouts and you get the packet it will give you the score sheet on what you are judged on and how many points each category is. It has crowd appeal for 10 points, projection for 10 points, tumbling for 5 points, jumps for 10 points, motions for 15 points, and dance for 10 points. So if you were to get a perfect score it would be a total of 60 points.
