A new season of competitive cheer is just around the corner!
Follow these few simple steps to help set up your child/teen for a successful team placement experience.
1. Encourage your child to trust the process.
- We are the experts and know which team will best serve each child in their development in the sport of cheer.
- Discourage any discussion that suggests anyone else (your child, you, other parents, other children) knows more about placements than we do – this only leads to disappointment.
- Encourage trust in the experts.
2. Lower the pressure.
- We are technically assessing each child at the gym all season long.
- What skills they perform, or do not perform, the day of Team Placements does not change what we’ve learned about them as athletes all season long.
- Do not put unnecessary pressure on your child – team placements never makes or breaks a child’s placement for next season – pressure only hinders your child’s ability to do their best.
- We make sure to come see every athlete during Team Placements, but what matters more than this visit with the owners, is how that child has developed throughout the entire season.
- We rely on feedback from their coaches and consider their behaviour at practice, their attendance, their coachability, their attitude and their skill development in stunting, tumbling, jumps, and performance throughout the entire season.
3. Ask them the right questions.
- The best thing you can do as a sports parent is to not act as a coach – which involves giving feedback or advice on how they did in their respective sport.
- Instead, be their parent – ask them how they FEEL about the Team Placement session – share in their joy if they are pleased, comfort them if they feel disappointed, and give them the space and trust to work through their own feelings.
To find out when we will be visiting your child’s team practice for their Team Placement follow this link to our Events Calendar. HERE