High School Alternates?

[coach.elle]

I'm curious how other high school teams handle having alternates. Do they compete on JV until you need them? Do some schools have alternates for JV? Mine competed on JV until I needed them but when I did take them off to compete with Varsity, the JV team was messed up. How do your schools deal with this?

 

[cheerislove8]

My HS doesn't have a JV so alternates got to do everything except go out on the mat at competition. They still cheered at games, tumbled at practices, and if there were enough alternates to make a stunt group they would. Also, if someone was sick or absent from practices, typically one of the alternates knew enough of their part to fill in for the day.

 

[Rudags]

I dont coach High School, but I choreograph a lot of schools in my area. Alternates are placed on varsity. They cheer games, basically do EVERYTHING except compete at competitions. Most teams I worked with had 4 alternates (which normally was a back, main, side, and flyer) and they were choreographed in teh routine in the back row for everything and always symmetical so they are easily taken out. Also, that way they know the routine so they can fill in for people, and also for when they do their routine at pep ralleys or halftimes, EVERYONE can participate.

 

[cheerislove8]

I dont coach High School, but I choreograph a lot of schools in my area. Alternates are placed on varsity. They cheer games, basically do EVERYTHING except compete at competitions. Most teams I worked with had 4 alternates (which normally was a back, main, side, and flyer) and they were choreographed in teh routine in the back row for everything and always symmetical so they are easily taken out. Also, that way they know the routine so they can fill in for people, and also for when they do their routine at pep ralleys or halftimes, EVERYONE can participate.

Yup, that's exactly how my school had it when I cheered! I didn't mention pep rallies and half time in my post.

 

[coach.elle]

My HS doesn't have a JV so alternates got to do everything except go out on the mat at competition. They still cheered at games, tumbled at practices, and if there were enough alternates to make a stunt group they would. Also, if someone was sick or absent from practices, typically one of the alternates knew enough of their part to fill in for the day.

This is exactly what we do with ours. But as we get into the season.. I am finding that when someone is injured on varsity I would rather take a girl from jv then one of my alternates because they have gotten so much better through the season. They are getting to stunt more. That's why I've been putting alternates on jv I guess.. I think they get better faster. But it makes things complicated.

 

[Deleted member 4831]

At my school JV and varsity are two separate teams, varsity would take 20 girls every year and compete 16 girls, the other four were alternates. The alternates were decided the practice before choreography based on skill and how hard they worked. The alternates learned the routine with everyone else, stunts and all, and did everything else that varsity did. The only difference was they didnt see the mat until pep rally, or if someone got hurt, or failed off. JV competed with their own routine

 

[srt418]

As rudags and cheerislove8 have said, all the schools I have seen have used alternates strictly for competitions, but are otherwise on the team for everything else.

I know other sports use JV as alternates for a V team (this happens a lot in football at least). It seems to work out pretty well. I wouldn't put JV members on Varsity if you already have alternates on Varsity. If you see that the JV members are so much better than your Varsity alternates, I wouldn't do anything about it this season, but keep that in mind for tryouts next season. I would just tell everyone at the next tryouts that you will not have "alternates" for varsity, but you will bring JV members up if they are needed.

 

[ErinS]

I'm curious how other high school teams handle having alternates. Do they compete on JV until you need them? Do some schools have alternates for JV? Mine competed on JV until I needed them but when I did take them off to compete with Varsity, the JV team was messed up. How do your schools deal with this?

My sister's high school team had a Varsity A (football and competition, with the option of cheering basketball) and a Varsity B...which consisted of girls that had never cheered before, were mainly in 7th or 8th grade, they wore an old uniform, they went to camp as a separate team, had separate practices, had a separate coach until she quit. They cheered home football games, jv games, basketball games. Some of the girls on Varsity A quit (moved, school transfer) or got injured so they didn't have a full team of 24 for competition...so they pulled up 2 girls from Varsity B to compete...and one girl got pulled up to Varsity A permanently.

Essentially Varsity B was a JV but the school wasn't "allowed to have a JV cheerleading team"

 

[CheerKatie08]

26 make Varsity. All 26 cheer at games, but only 16 compete.

 

[Sean@cfo]

One of the school teams we work with has 32 on Varsity and 14 on JV. Athletes from both squads tryout for the competition team, which functions completely separate from JV or Varsity and is only for competitions. They take 30 on the competition team and 5 alternates. At any point if an athlete is injured or is not pulling her weight, the coach may swap in an alternate into the routine making the first athlete an alternate. The change is pretty much a done deal until some other crisis comes up. It's worked great for them this past year.

 

[coach.elle]

Haha! That's too funny! "fine,

My sister's high school team had a Varsity A (football and competition, with the option of cheering basketball) and a Varsity B...which consisted of girls that had never cheered before, were mainly in 7th or 8th grade, they wore an old uniform, they went to camp as a separate team, had separate practices, had a separate coach until she quit. They cheered home football games, jv games, basketball games. Some of the girls on Varsity A quit (moved, school transfer) or got injured so they didn't have a full team of 24 for competition...so they pulled up 2 girls from Varsity B to compete...and one girl got pulled up to Varsity A permanently.

"fine, we can't have a jv... We'll call it varsity b!" way to stick it to the man.
It's crazy that schools expect cheerleaders to cheer for boys basketball girls basketball hockey football 10h grade 9th grade and a partridge in a pear tree and give us absolutely no funding.

Essentially Varsity B was a JV but the school wasn't "allowed to have a JV cheerleading team"

 

[tntdynomite]

I think pulling up a JV person is okay as long as their team doesn't compete. If JV competes and you pull somebody up, you basically ruin their routine. I think the best way is to have a separate competition team made up of V and JV members.

 

[ttumble0819]

my high school doesn't have JV so we have alternates on varsity. They are alternates to the competition team only. I had 5 alternates this year and have already pulled three up to the competition team for various reasons (injury fill-ins to girls who just upped skill level greatly). It basically gives us depth without a JV team and gives girls an opportunity to make it on the team and work towards the competition floor. It also gives me an opportunity to take a chance on some girls who aren't quite competition ready at tryouts but maybe by time we are ready to compete. I re-evaluate the alternates late september and thats who makes the floor.

Alternates are also expected to know the entire comp routine and be able to fill in for injury illness whatever is needed.

 

[kcpack22]

Well, because I do all stars as well, and am the most experienced and have the hardest tumbling passes, my team didn't want to not have me on the team at all. The arrangement we worked out is that I would cheer at all varsity games (that I could attend) and compete in the competitions that I could attend as well. For the routines I was put in spots that wouldn't look different if someone was missing. Originally, I could only compete for 3 out of the 4 competitions but one of our captains fractured her back so I stepped in to the last competition that I was supposedly not supposed to be able to go to and just made it work.