1. Be Positive: A positive attitude is contagious. As you are the primary role model for your team’s attitude, try to always find the positive in everything. Remember, if you complain, you give your cheerleaders a window for complaints too.
2. Positive feedback and compliments: Give a lot of feedback to your cheerleaders as well as compliments. A compliment from you can really mean A LOT!
3. Safety First: If you put safety as a priority then your team will too.
4. Rules and Procedures: Set a very specific set of rules and procedures for your team and practices. Review them with your team and have each of your cheerleaders sign them. In order for them to mean anything, you must enforce them.
5. Be Prepared: Always come to practice with a plan and know what your goal for that day is. At the beginning of practice, tell your cheerleaders what your practice goal is. This way, you do not waist time and your cheerleader know what they need to accomplish.
6. Keep Them Challenged: Keep your team challenged. Continue to increase the difficulty of their routines in small intervals to keep them excited about practice. You will see their excitement level increase as they learn new skills.
7. Make your warm ups count: Practice competition skills during your warm up to save time. For example, during your jump warm ups, have the team use the jump sequence that you are going to use in your upcoming routine.
8. Have Fun! If you make practice fun then your team will enjoy practice and will want to come. For example, you can take a 5 minute break and play a game and give out prizes.
9. Grades are Important! Make sure your team understands that school work comes first and that their grades are important to you. For example, give prizes, coupons, or a piece of candy for good grades on a test.
10. Break Up Cliques: As soon as you see small groups forming on your team, try to break them up. Move around stunt groups, play games in new groups, or give out projects and you assign the groups.