World Of Cheerleading
Professional Cheerleaders
Professional cheerleaders or dancers cheer for sports such as american football, basktetball, baseball, wrestling or hockey. They are members of professional cheerleading leagues like the NFL Cheerleading league, the NBA Cheerleading league and others.
The majority of professional cheerleaders don't travel with their team, only the most famous team such as the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders travel all around the world to make appearances.
Since cheerleading doesn't pay very much, the girls need to have other jobs, be a student or have another full-time career. For them cheerleading is a part-time job.
It is important to know that the cheerleaders which are in a professional league represent the company organization and the image it wants to convey.
Being a NFL cheerleader does need some requirements, however they are not as harsh as we can think :
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Time : Huge time commitment.
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Full-time job : Have a full-time job.
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Age : Age range from 18 to 42.
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Education : Have a GED or a high school diploma.
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Height / Weight* : These are not requirements to be in a cheerleading league, but it is recommended to be in good physical shape since the training lasts 3 to 4 hours, 2 to 4 times per week.
*Some of the teams do have height and weight requirements, but it is to ensure that cheerleaders were not becoming to skinny.
High School / College Cheerleaders
High school cheerleaders are associated with their school and the main focus is to cheer for other sports, there is also some high school that do competitions against others.
Lots of the schools have some tryouts to make their teams, the coach then decides what he/she is looking for in cheerleaders. This can lead to a variety in the teams depending on the grade and/or skill of the cheerleaders.
Most of the squad trains at least three days per week and about two hours each training. Many teams also have tumbling sessions outside of pratice.
The schools that do competitions need to create a routine that their cheerleaders will perfom. The routine lasts for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds and requires dance, jumps, tumbling and stunts (including basket toss and pyramide).
Some of the high school team have a professional choreographer helping them to create the routine to ensure that they are not breaking any rules and that their routines will be able to win first place.
It is hard for these schools to always have the newest and hottest routines since the rules and styles change every year.
Boys can also be part of the team, and can be really usefull for the stunting part.
There is no requirements to be on a high school team, it all depends on the tryouts and the decision of the coach.
All Star Cheerleaders
Most of the All Star cheerleaders are associated with a gym that teaches tumbling, gymnastics and cheerleading. Their main objectives is to compete and perfome. Since they mostly focus on competitions they usually have a very high skill level.
All star cheerleaders also have more than one coach, they usually have a tumbling coach, a stunting coach and a choreographer. Which lead All Star cheerleaders to be skilled in many thing such as tumbling, dance and stunting.
To make it on an All Star squad you have to go through a rigorous tryout. Sometimes they can have more than the regular tryout, they can have a flyer tryout and a Worlds tryout as well.
Also, it is not every gym that have place for every one, it depends on how popular the gym is and what type of athletes they are looking for.
The tryouts often start during spring, and start their first training during summer.
All Star cheerleading can be very expensive depending on the team you are on, this include uniform, travel, lessons and all other expenses related to competitions.
There is also more divions and level in the All Star cheerleading compare to the high school:
The team is small, medium or large.
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Small : 24 athletes?
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Medium :
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Large : 25 to 26 athletes?
Then it is All Girl or Coed.
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All Girl : Only girl on the team.
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Coed : Maximum of 4 males in the team.
And finally it is International Open or Senior.
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International Open* :
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Senior :
*International Open doesn't have small, medium or large.
All Star teams go from level 2 to level 6, and 6 being the hardest level.
The number of practices can vary depending on the level of your team, Worlds teams will have more training than the other ones. Teams train for about 2 to 3 hours, several days a week and the trainings are vey hard.