Tag Archives: Reidland

Mark’s Cheer Journal – Part 4

Well, it has been a few months since I wrote a journal – it’s a crazy busy time of year for me, so I guess it’s time for me to check back in. Andre even told me that a few people had been searching the site for my journal, so I have felt guilty for keeping my “audience” hanging. All four of you.

Anyway, we are about a month away from UCA Regional Competitions here in the Mid South, and my teams are working hard to be ready. As a coach, I always try to leave a month to clean things up before a competition. I try to not make ANY changes to the routine the last 4 weeks before a competition, so that the team can thoroughly master the routine. Of course, that is what I TRY to do with each of my teams. The first competition of the year usually crunches the mastering time of my teams quite a bit. And as you will see, not all of our teams are ready to just “clean up” over the next month.

Let’s start with my most prepared team, Graves County. GCHS has been working very hard this year and they are actually on target for the schedule that I mentioned above. They are the only team with whom I work that has been doing their routine full out for over a month now, and they are way ahead of schedule from any of the other six years that I have worked with them. We normally don’t finish our routine until September or the first of October. However, our main competitors at UCA Nationals have forced us to work harder and be more prepared each new season. We finished our routine in July this year, and have been working on it ever since. We are constantly tweaking things and altering counts here and there, but the core of the routine has been set for some time now.

Now, we did water our routine down about a month ago. We were not hitting certain parts and we felt like the routine was too hard, so we watered things down. We have set very specific goals for the team’s progress and our execution for competitions this year. We have never hit our routine at UCA Regionals – we came really close last year, and we are determined to change that this year. We hope that by watering things down we will increase our chance of having a great performance at regionals. This fact has also motivated us to try to be further along with our routine at this point in the season. We are hoping that being more prepared for regionals will translate into a better performance but also better performances down the road. Most years, we have felt decently prepared before Regionals. But it seems like when we look back every season and say, “What were we thinking last year??!?!” So, we are constantly evolving our methods and our schedule. Every team is different, and a schedule for one team may not be possible for another, but I would definitely recommend one to evaluate their performance from previous years and apply what you have learned. And just because something works for one team doesn’t mean that it will work for every team or every season.

Despite being ahead of schedule, GCHS has still several challenges they have been dealing with. Three more people have quit the team since we last checked in and GCHS will probably only compete with 18 or 19 people on the mat at regionals. We have had a few new people show interest and start coming to practice. So, we have also had to make time each practice for those people to get some reps and not just have them sit there and watch the rest of the team do the routine. The goal is to add one or more of these people to the routine after regionals. If they stick with it, then we probably will.

Up until recently, Graves has been practicing in a building with no AC and the temperature has been in the 90’s. On really hot days we try to give the kids more breaks and focus more parts. The heat is not the best atmosphere but at least we can have a full floor and work on formations and spacing. If we stayed at the high school, we would have to fight for gym time with volleyball and often would have to practice in the upper deck of the gym where we can only put down 3 mats. So, as soon as the weather permits, we move to the local rec center where we can have a space. The weather definitely makes it challenging at times, but we tough it out in order to get ready.

My other teams have not been as prepared for as long as Graves, but both Reidland and Boyd County have their routines set for Regionals and now have several weeks to just run through things full out. It is important for the teams’ conditioning that they do their routine full out as much as possible each practice the final month before practice. Each of my teams tries to go full out around 3 times a practice. If they do really good sometimes we will only go twice and then work on cleaning up the separate parts.

I didn’t intend this to be all about Graves County, but it is easier for me to talk about their practices and schedule because I talk to their head coach almost daily about their progress. I have been in better communication with Reidland’s coaches this year, but I don’t get to spend the same amount of time talking about the team as I do with Jon from Graves. Like I have mentioned before, almost all of the Reidland boys play other sports and it has made progress slow so far this season. Reidland has rarely had everyone at practice and this makes it extremely tough to work on the routine. But, they should have their boys most of the time now, so hopefully we will see great strides from them this next month. Reidland is always behind Graves in the fall but they have the ability to pull things together quicker than Graves seems too. I have wondered if it’s because they have more girls with more years of experience and that explains for their knack of being able to get ready fast. They have a long way to go over the coming weeks, but I was really pleased with what I saw from them last week. The went full out for the first time and had far fewer mistakes than I would have predicted. So, that was very encouraging. They just need to get as many reps as possible until regionals to clean everything up.

I’m not going to have time to talk much about Boyd County this month. They have been working very hard on their stunt sequences to get the “meat and potatoes”of their routine ready for regionals. Slowed by an injury to one of their three flyers and other injuries, the girls have also been working hard on individual tumbling skills since it has been impossible to do the routine full out. They have been working on parts and will start putting it all together this week. Like Reidland, Boyd has individuals with more competition and overall cheer experience, and they don’t need as much time to get ready for regionals. Although, I would like to be further along than we are at this point! Injuries have just not let us do that.

UCA Regionals is less than 3 weeks away, and the 2011 NHSCC is only around 100 Days away. Until next month, it is best to…

Make the most of each practice!

Mark Coleman

Mark’s Cheer Journal – Part 3

School is beginning back up here in KY and with it each of OUR – if you are keeping up with these journals, then I will give you some ownership too – three teams is starting to return to some sense of practice normalcy. This summer has been a mixed bag for each of our teams, and it will be nice to return to practices where we can expect everyone to be there! I don’t think any of our three teams have had many practices in the past month with all people present. I don’t know if any of the teams has had a single practice in July with everyone there. Fortunately, lots of work has still been accomplished, and I am very pleased with each of our teams thus far. We didn’t get to talk about Boyd County much last month, so we will start there.

The biggest challenges facing Boyd County over the past few years has been finding some sort of consistency and stability. Boyd has had three different head coaches the past three years and also had multiple people quit mid season each year. We have just had a really difficult time keeping kids on the team. I would say one major reason is that, when I came onboard, I immediately raised the level of commitment and also raised the minimum tumbling requirements to compete – a standing back tuck. Several kids were thrown by this. They had never been made to work that hard and never had so much asked of them. There was an adjustment period for everyone on the team, but several were not prepared to make that kind of commitment. Now that the standard has been set, we have a hard time finding kids willing to work that hard.

As a choreographer and part-time coach for Boyd County HS – I drive 2 hours to Ashland about once a week to work with them, I have tried to set consistent standards and establish a foundation for a program with a revolving door for a head coach. Don’t get me wrong, I still have the easy job and I understand why it is hard to keep head coaches. In fact, I was a sponsor/head cheer coach for a high school team for six weeks once… SIX. WEEKS. ONCE. I have the greatest respect and at the same time the deepest sympathy for cheer team sponsors.

When I started working with Boyd a little over three years ago, we had over 20 people on the team. Six quit that year and we ended up competing as Medium Varsity with 16. The next year we had several more defect and we completed as Medium with only 15 people. Last year, we had several not come back at tryouts, had one quit in October, one get kicked off because of behavior, and as a result we completed as Small Varsity. Oh, and we also had an injury to a girl who tore ligaments in her ankle and had surgery because she stepped in a hole in her yard. Parent drama – check. Adversity – been in line for a while. Trials and tribulations – bought the CD. And don’t get me wrong. These types of things happen to just about every team just about every season. But at least now you know that Boyd County is right there with everyone else fighting the “good fight”.

This summer, Boyd has been bitten by the injury bug again and it has really held back progress for one of their stunt groups. One of our flyers broke a bone in her hand and was supposed to be out six weeks. Six weeks came and went and then they decided that she needed surgery. Now, she is out until October. Hopefully, when she gets back her stunt group will be able to jump right back into things. She is a third year flyer and her group was actually fortunately hitting the elite sequence at camp. So, if we had to lose a top girl to injury, she would have been the one that we could most afford to lose.

In the meantime, we have two stunt groups that are really doing well. One group has a freshman flyer who is really starting to come into her own. I was a little worried when she came in because she was little and easy to pick up, but it was obvious that her being tiny had allowed her to be loose and not hear much grief from her bases. “Little girl” syndrome sometime takes some time to overcome, but she is really coming along – and faster than I first thought. Our other group has a senior flyer and they are also finally catching up after struggling for the first few months. I know it has been hard on the flyer because she has been one of our most consistent flyers the past two years. She has really done a great job being patient and waiting for her TWO rookie bases to learn their roles.

So far, I have been really pleased with the summer progress of all of our teams. Each is on very different paths to what each hopes will end in a national championship. At this point, I don’t think that that goal is unattainable for any of our teams. However, we still have a lot of work to do on each team and we are just now hitting the first “straight-away” of the season. I travel to Western Kentucky this week to finish the routines of Reidland and Graves County. So, next month, I will have some more insight on those two teams.

Make the most of each practice!

Mark Coleman

Mark’s Cheer Journal – Part 2

With summer in full swing and summer vacation – at least here in Kentucky – half over, our three teams – Graves County HS (Large Coed), Reidland HS (Small Coed), and Boyd County HS (Small Varsity) – find themselves smack dab in the middle of DEAD PERIOD. Each summer from June 25th until July 9th, high school cheer teams here in the Commonwealth have a mandatory period during which they are not allowed to have organized practices. So, despite the fact that a month has passed since I last checked in, not as much progress has been made by each of my teams as one would have hoped. However, I am still very pleased with the work that they did at each of their respective camps this past month. And, as of now, I would say that each is still on a path that could result in their having a serious chance to compete for a national title at the 2011 NHSCC in Orlando, FL.

Each year, I tell my teams that each season is a marathon and not a sprint. Each season is long and that there will be good and bad days. The teams that work the hardest for the longest will be ahead at the end of the race. I also impress upon all of my teams the need for their team to be better than they were last year. I tell them that the best teams always improve and that what it took to win last year more than likely won’t be enough to win this year. The message that I bang over my kids head is that – there is no secret to success, it is just HARD WORK.

The spring and summer are the times when each of my teams makes the most progress. Even though some of the kids work, most still have fewer responsibilities as during the summer and thus are able to spend extra time working on new skills that they will need to master for the coming year’s routine. At the beginning of each season, I set specific goals in regards to tumbling and stunting for each team – and often each individual team member – in order to motivate them during the times during which they can make the most gains. These goals are meant to push each individual but are also designed to be realistic. That way – if the team members work hard enough – they can achieve most or all of their goals and feel accomplished.

Graves County, Reidland, and Boyd County each started putting their routines together over the past month. Each team made different levels of progress with their routines, but all were taught at least some of the “meat and potatoes” of their routine. I also use potential routine elements as motivators. Since none of my teams is fully capable of hitting all parts of ANY portion of their routine at this point, the knowledge of what is expected (or HOPED for) for one part of the routine can be a powerful motivator. Setting goals is very important, but I have found that one of the most powerful motivators at my disposal is to choreograph a certain skill into a routine. Its one thing to talk about, for example, squad standing back handspring tucks, but actually putting the skill into the routine that I teach often seems to carry more weight with today’s athletes. Maybe it makes it more “real.” Maybe it communicates that, “OK, Mark is serious about putting these in the routine.” I also like to believe that the kids trust me and my knowledge. And by me putting something in the routine, they start to believe that it is possible. I have heard some my kids say, “Mark wouldn’t put this in the routine if he didn’t think we could do it.” Whatever the explanation, I intentionally do this every year and choreograph critical parts of the routine as early as possible in order to give sufficient time for mastery. It doesn’t always work in all areas, and certain portions of my routines have to be altered or watered down. But quite often, the kids will rise to meet some of the challenges. And I believe that by challenging them early on in the season we maximize our chances of making some significant breakthroughs.

Like I said earlier, I was very pleased with the progress to date of all three of these teams. Graves County is far more talented than we have ever been. The majority of the team has been working very hard and we return a lot more experience than we had last year. A couple of last years’ alternates have stepped in and are going to be able to contribute. We will have better skills across the board than we have ever had. We will have more team tumbling and more difficult elite tumbling than we have ever had. BUT… we have been here before. In 2008, we had a team similarly talented but who lacked proper leadership and had some team members who were over confident. The end result was that we were not a “team” and we shot ourselves in the foot with mistakes at nationals. So, the biggest challenge of this year’s team is to stay hungry and motivated. Most of the current team were rookies on the mat when we won this past year. So, they now know what it feels like to win. So, there is some concern that they might not want it as bad this year. I have tried to impress upon them how much harder it is to repeat than to win the first time. It’s even harder to win three in a row. It’s so difficult that only one team has won UCA Large Coed three years in a row – Christian Brothers HS. Maybe you have heard of them. CBHS actual won at least three in a row twice. Graves County will never eclipse what CBHS did or what they have meant to UCA Large Coed through the years. But we do try to motivate our kids with the knowledge that if we can win in 2011, we can be the only other team besides CBHS that ever won three in a row. We failed to win our third consecutive title three years ago, so we try to motivate our kids to accomplish in 2011 what we failed to accomplish in 2008.

GCHS also needs to stay healthy. We have only a couple of alternates this year and their experience and skill level is quite a drop from those people that we hope will be on the mat. Our routine would probably have to change drastically if one of our key stunters was injured. We train very hard to help prevent injuries, but sometimes things just happen. Hopefully, we can stay healthy this season, because we do not have a lot of depth beyond our top 20.

Our next team is Reidland HS. I have been working with Reidland since 2005 and started choreographing their routines in 2006. Like all teams, Reidland has challenges unique to that squad. Coming from a very small school (under 500 students), Reidland is constantly battling other sports teams over athletes. There are just not that many guys in the school. And if you are any kind of athlete at Reidland or of decent size, you are constantly recruited to other more traditional sports. Even though the cheerleading is the most successful sport for males at Reidland, we still have to share athletes. Because a few of Reidland’s past guy cheerleaders were strong athletic guys who are now having success at the collegiate level, Reidland’s coed team has had a surplus of guys the past few years.

The good news is that Reidland is starting to attract the best male athletes in the school. The bad news is that the other coaches and sports teams don’t appreciate fighting for the already limited number of athletes – especially when it’s CHEERLEADING. Even so, the coed style of cheerleading that Reidland champions is winning guys over enough to participate but not enough to get them to dedicate themselves solely to cheerleading. I am sure that this is a common theme at almost all high schools that have guy cheerleaders. It, however, is not the case at Graves County. At GCHS, hardly any of the boys play other sports. It is probably one of our greatest assets. Those kids literally live for coed stunting and cheering. Unfortunately, that kind of situation is just not possible at Reidland. Sharing kids with baseball, soccer, and football and trying to coordinate practice schedules is probably one of the greatest challenges that Reidland faces.

I mention all of this because Reidland just had one of their top 4 guys quit yesterday. Fortunately, they have another guy that is almost as good who is ready to step in. The guy who quit did so because he wanted to play basketball. The head coach told him that he could play basketball, but that we would make him an alternate because of the practices he would have to miss late in the season. As the cheerleading world turns…

So, when I go back next week, we will have to spend quite a bit of time re-teaching the pyramids that I taught them last month. However, it’s way better to do that now – in July – than in February like we had to do last year. Reidland’s most talented guy got into a shouting match at a game last year and we had to kick him off the team a month before nationals. Nothing like re-choreographing your routine and putting in a rookie guy who’s never competed a month before nationals! Hopefully, the potential for future drama has eliminated itself and the rest of this season will be relatively smooth. We will see!

Next month I will update you on Boyd County’s summer progress and talk about the biggest obstacles that they are facing this season. The 2011 NHSCC is now only 218 Days away. It will be here before we know it! Until then…

Make the most of each practice!

Mark Coleman

Mark’s Cheer Journal – Part 1

Hi, my name is Mark Coleman and I am a full time cheer coach and choreographer. I am the owner of Performance Spirit, LLC, and I travel around the country and even around the world – I have been to Finland twice! – to do camps and clinics with cheer squads of all ages and skill levels. Most of these camps involve me choreographing routines for teams that will be competing at KAPOS – Kentucky’s state cheerleading organization – or at the NHSCC in Orlando, FL. Because I am a former college cheerleader at Vanderbilt University and the University of Kentucky and a former UCA Head Instructor, I have a strong background in the “traditional” or “more collegiate” style of cheerleading. You could also argue that this style is also the “UCA” style of cheerleading. In addition, I also spent 8 years coaching all star cheerleading – 3 years at Kentucky Elite and 5 years at Pep Club. From 2006-2007, I was a coach representative member of the USASF National Advisory Board. I have also been a National’s level competition judge for such companies as UCA and COA. So, I am not only well versed in the current all star cheerleading style but also the inner workings of the all star industry.

Since 1999, I have been using my combined experiences and knowledge to help teams compete at the highest levels of cheerleading. I have worked very hard to become an established cheerleading coach and choreographer and try to handle myself as a professional at all times. Although teams for which I have choreographed have won 35 State and National titles, I like to think of myself more as a coach than merely a choreographer. I take great pride in helping teams to “get to the next level.” And often the advice that I give to teams extends beyond just giving them a competitive routine or a new set of stunting techniques. I teach squads the winning ways that I have learned from some of the best cheer programs in the country and the strategies that I have implemented with my own teams.

The purpose of this monthly series will be to share my insights and to help document the progress of some of my teams as they prepare for the 2011 NHSCC. These teams will all be on unique paths competing in different divisions, each with their own unique challenges, but each team will be trying to get to the same destination – as 2011 NHSCC National Champions. We will be following the journeys of three teams from Kentucky – Graves County High School (large coed), Reidland High School (small coed), and Boyd County High School (small varsity), so let’s get started!

All three of these teams had try-outs last month, and are just now starting summer practices. Most of my teams practice once or twice a week during the summer with another practice for tumbling. The coed kids from Graves County will often get together once or twice extra a week to work on stunts. The kids from Reidland and Graves County often attend open gyms a few times a month to work on tumbling and stunting. In addition to being an extra time to practice, I appreciate this time that they spend on the weekends together because it is extra team bonding and also keeps them from getting into other “things.”

At try-outs each year, the coaching staffs of each of these teams set goals. This year, all three of my teams have set the same goal – to win the 2011 NHSCC. For Graves County, this is a yearly goal since we won our first title in 2006. The team members know the expectations before they join the team, and often they join the team because they want the opportunity to be a National Champion.

For Reidland who normally competes against Sparkman High School – a UCA Dynasty in small coed, the goal is normally to get as good as we can and try to make Sparkman sweat. However, UCA recently announced that they will split the small coed division based on school size. Reidland is a very small school and Sparkman is a large school. So, Reidland and Sparkman will no longer be competing in the same division. Accordingly, Reidland’s goals for this season have changed. With Sparkman no longer in the way, we have explained to the kids that they may have a much more legitimate chance to win this year. Of course, the kids will have to make the commitment and put in the work. Especially in tumbling, Reidland has lots of work to do. We will see how much progress they make this summer.

Boyd County High School has also expressed to me their desire to win nationals next year. I mention that it is their desire because I believe that it doesn’t matter what “I want,” but what they are willing to work to achieve. Boyd County placed second last year in Small Varsity Division II after a very trying and tumultuous year. In December of last year, the head coach almost threw in the towel (she ultimately resigned at the end of the season). It was somewhat of a miracle that Boyd even made it to Orlando. But they did, and they got second. This year, the girls have a new coach, are determined to have less drama, and want to go back to Nationals and move up one more spot.

Next month, I will continue explaining the summer regiments of Graves, Reidland, and Boyd and I will update you on their progress through June. This month, all three teams will have routine camps to start working on the routines that they will showcase next fall at regional competitions and which are the beginning permutations of what they will compete with at nationals in 246 days. Until then…

Make the most of each practice!

Mark Coleman

Spirit Post News

This month we’ve added two new sections to Spirit Post, Squared (http://spiritpost.com/squared) and Priority Seating (http://spiritpost.com/priorityseating). Squared, which stands for Spirit Post 2, will be used to publish information sent to us, such as Press Releases and Opinions. Squared will also be used to help us see if there is anything we need to add to the main Spirit Post section. Priority Seating will be the competition results section of Spirit Post.

There will also be a few guest authors joining us soon, starting with Mark Coleman. Mark, among other things, is the coach of Reidland, Boyd County, and defending Large Coed National Champion Graves County high schools in Kentucky. He’ll be joining us to give us insight on what it takes to prepare a team for UCA High School Nationals.