Being a Pee Wee or youth cheerleading coach can be a both rewarding and stressful job.  Young children can tend to have very short attention spans.  As a coach you want to make sure that your practices are productive and fun. Here are five rules that every youth cheer coach must know…

1)      Always follow a Schedule.  Before each practice make sure that you decide what you want to accomplish that day.  Set specific times to work on specific things

2)      Never spend too much time on one thing.  Young children will lose interest in any task if you have been doing it for too long.  It’s a good idea to plan on only spending fifteen minutes on one thing.  For example you might decide to spend fifteen minutes a day on stunting then move on to learning cheers for the next fifteen minutes.

3)      Set up clear rules and guidelines and follow them.  Children need to have rules set into place.  Don’t let your team walk all over you.  If you make the rules clear to your squad in the beginning your practices will go much smoother.   If rules are follow through with your predetermined consequences.  Most importantly, you must follow all of your own rules.  Your team will look to you to set an example for them.

4)      Make practice fun.  When you see your squads attention span getting sort switch modes on them.  Let your team play a fun cheerleading game it will keep them interested while they are learning new skills

5)      Never teach skills that are too advanced for your team.  If the skills that you are teaching in practice are to hard for your team to perform they are going to feel really discouraged and even worse, they could be seriously injured.