The Cheerleaders job, as we pointed out in a
previous post, is “to lead and motivate crowds at a sporting event.” If a crowd starts to get unruly and starts
yelling inappropriate comments at Referees, Coaches or the other team and its
fans, cheerleaders to try to contain or control
the situation so it does not get out of hand.
I teach my teams to be aware of the crowd
environment and cheer accordingly. If
the crowd is high energy then we need to focus on cheers that will keep them
yelling with us. We do cheers and
chants that the crowd will participate in.
If they are yelling with us, they are not yelling anything
inappropriate. All of our cheers and
chants cheer for our team, not against the other team. We do not do B-E-A-T cheers or cheers that
have negative connotation towards the other team. Our cheers focus on win, score, defense and pumping up the
team.
Sometimes the crowd yells things directly at the
Referees or they make negative comments about the other team in general. When this happens, I have my team start
chants that are loud and will hopefully get the crowd yelling with them. Cheers that contain lots of stomping and
repeating back are a good choice. I try to get them to be louder than the one
or two fans that are causing the problem.
This will keep the referees from hearing the offending fans. It also shows the Referees that we are
making an effort to keep our fans at bay and not supporting the problem.
The last tool that my teams have to corralling the
fans is their timeout and quarter break performances. At our school, the crowd prefers the dancing, stunting and
tumbling to cheers and chants. Almost
all of our timeouts include these pieces.
My cheerleaders are trained to take the floor immediately after the
buzzer rings for the quarter break or as soon as the Referee makes the call for
the full time out. If they are rallying
onto the floor and making noise, the crowd has less opportunity to make
negative comments in the down time of a game.
We remove the opportunity for the offending crowd member to have an
audience.
As a coach, I also have a responsibility to crowd
control. I am the one sitting in the
stands by the cheerleaders and I am usually aware of what the crowds are
saying. Being at the school for as long
as I have, many of the students and parents know me so I can usually make eye
contact or go talk to the person that is a problem. If I don’t know a student or don’t feel comfortable talking to
them I usually bring it to the attention of the administrator or in our case a
school police officer.
CHEERS!
*\o/*
CW3
www.readysetyoubet.blogspot.com
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