No Cheerleaders!

I have often gotten questions about why the Cheerleaders do not Cheer at all the Basketball games. SO I thought I could share this information with all of you.

Every winter our Basketball teams play over 50 basketball games between the Boys and Girls teams and tournaments. We would love to have the cheerleaders cheer at every single one of these games. But, this really isn't appropriate to require the cheerleaders to cheer at every game. There is not a single other athletic team which requires it's team members to have a season consisting of 50 games. It's not even close. During the Basketball season both the Boys and Girls teams average 2 games per week. We never play games on Sundays, so  that means that the cheerleaders would have to cheer, on average 4 nights per week and only have 2 nights off. Of course, on those nights they would probably practice. Yes, they practice at least 2 nights a week during all of the fall season and the winter season. Again, no other team has to have this level of commitment.

So with all of those thoughts in mind, we do not require the cheerleaders to cheer at all the basketball games. Since we don't require them to cheer at every game, we have to come up with a way where they cheer equally at Boys and Girls games. Area schools do this differently. Our conference schools also handle this situation differently. Some schools have their cheerleaders cheer at all conference games. Some have them cheer all home games and not any road games. Still other schools just give them a number of games to cheer at and it is a combination of home and away games.  At Garrett High School, I sit down with the cheer coach and we decide which games we will cheer at treating the boys and girls teams equally. Generally the agreement is to cheer at all conference games and tournament games. This year, we have decided to increase the number of games they cheer at (over last year) by having them cheer at all weekend games and tournament games. This will mean our Cheerleaders will cheer at more than 30 games this season. (Depending on our success in the Conference Tournament and the IHSAA tournament it could be more or less)  That's a lot of games for one coach and a volunteer assistant.

As I said before, we love to have our cheerleaders at the games to get our fans excited and support our teams. But, there is a limit to what is a reasonable expectation.  When the cheerleaders aren't cheering, it is up to the students and the adult fans to step up their support and yell even louder. I have been very impressed with our students this year and the way they have cheered for our teams. Tonight was no exception!