High School book research- help educate us on the "big name" highschools

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Mar 25, 2010
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hey ya'll :)

I myself have very little to no experience with highschool cheerleading. For our book, we would like to touch base on the well known highschools and the rules that govern highschool cheerleaders. please feel free to share your thoughts! we can use all the help we can get!

peace, love, and happy cheering

Chrissy
 
I also have very little to no experience with high school cheer, so you can't exactly consider me an expert, but I do know that (within my group, at least) Brooke High, Archbishop Shaw, and Rochester High are pretty well known.

Again, I don't know much about the rules, but Brooke High is in West Virginia, competes on hardwood floors (no mats) and I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to compete out of state. Rochester is in Michigan, boys are not allowed on the team, and they do 3 rounds of cheering (no dance) - round 1 is arm motions/variety, round 2 is a ten-count (first few motions) and then skills (jumps, tumbling, etc.) and round 3 is stunts. Archbishop Shaw is a coed team in Louisiana and has won first twice at UCA nationals.
 
I went to and cheered at Sachse High School. They don't compete any more, the last year was my Sophomore year in 07. But we competed at NCA Nationals and won 5 years in a row, including multiple Grand Champs (the 5th and final being in 07). And those 5 years that Sachse won in a row was the first 5 years that the school was open. WE trained at Cheer Athletics, coached by Brad and other coaches from there...If it's something y'all want to use or get more info about, videos/pictures talk to others on the team. PM me or message me on Facebook and I can give y'all more details.
 
Well I'm on my school's cheerleading team, and we do comp as well as sideline cheerleading, so this is what I know

Firstly two of the most well known high school cheering teams are Dunbar (watch cheerleader nation to learn more about them ), and greenup county ( read "We've Got Spirit: The Life & Time's of America's Greatest Cheerleading Team" by James T. McElroy, to learn more about them). I've read the book about Greenup, and watched all the episodes of Cheerleader Nation, both are very interesting.
A really good team in my area (greater boston), is Burlington High School. They scored a nearly perfect score (something like 96.5), at regionals, the highest every (I'm not sure if it was highest for our regionals, or or anyone's regionals). They are a town very centered arund their Pop Warner cheerleaders. There is a movie called "Blood, Sweat & Cheers", about the Pop Warner team competing, (similar to high school comp). My signature is from the movie! Burlington sells the movie at their competitions.
My School (Winchester High School ) is in Massachusetts, and we are all-girl however, if a boy wanted to, he could join. We compete on a flat mat,with no spring boards under us. We do basket tosses, and stunts, just like allstar squads do. We do dances in our routine, as well as a cheer. We also tumble. We cheer for Soccer, football, hockey and basketball.
Some of our girls come from All-star teams, most are from JAG and one girl is from East Celebrity Elite. Our town rival (also a fairly good cheerleading team ) Woburn has a coach who owns JAG so they practice and take tumbling classes there. Girls also tend to come from Pop Warner backgrounds.
You might have to ask a coach or ckeck rule books for certain things because I know that in some areas certain stunts are illegal.
If you have any questions or anything you would like to know about high school cheering (i don't know if you also wanted to know about sideline cheering or what), feel free to pm me!
 
Sun Prarie from wisconsin is amazing!!!?!?! they are co ed, and our teams are like sister teams, they dont compete at our state competition anymore becuase they got tired of the title being handed to them. they got 2nd at the UCA coed last year :D
yeah, our rules are pretty much the same as allstar, but no spring mats and no flips while in a stunt.
 
Important for high school rules: no inversions are allowed aside from a suspended forward roll.
High school cheer varies widely by school and state......... the majority do not actually compete. Actual high school competitions do not have spring floor, though some schools choose to compete at all star comeptitions on spring floor in "school level" divisions( example: varsity level 3 at an allstar comp vs. varsity intermediate at NCA). The main 3 "school" nationals aside from state competitions are USA Nationals(West coast), NCA HS nationals(Texas/Oklahoma), and UCA HS nationals(teams from all over). State competitions are very different. The Georgia competition circuit is amazingly talented and more similar to allstar, where as michigan has a 3 round format as stated above. Some states are really messed up in their competition circuits however, such as west virginia competing on basketball flooring(which is illegal technically according to AACCA safety rules....).

Mater Dei HS has always had a strong program on the west coast:
Pretty impressive for 1987!

Putnam City North is always dominant at NCA (I believe PCN won something like 5 in a row for small advanced): This vid was posted only a couple weeks ago

Kamehameha HS and Radford HS from Hawaii are programs that never cease to amaze. Kamehameha =
Bob Jones HS, Madison Central HS, Sparkman HS, Graves County HS, Bowling Green HS, Greenup County HS and Dunbar HS are all strong UCA programs that have been going to UCA for eternity! All very talented!

In the Georgia Circuit, the competition is so close that its too hard to just name a few strong programs.
This youtube channel has a ton of GHSA nationals videos so you can look for yourself haha (there are some georgia HS kids on here that will have a better idea than me) http://www.youtube.com/user/AsianTumble10
 
AACCA.org has all the high school (and college rules). They also list your region's AACCA safety certifier. You may want to contact them to speak with them, but they may not be permitted to grant you an interview. Most likely you'll have to go through AACCA HQ for that.
As for well known high schools: Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (KY), Greenup County High School (KY), Bob Jones High School (AL), Father Judge High School (Philly), Collierville (TN) in coed: Christian Brothers (TN). You can see competition results for several years at varsity.com
Someone mentioned Brooke High in WV. Yes, WVSSAC (the governing body of HS sports) is VERY antiquated when it comes to cheerleading. When I was at WVU I judged one competition there (this was in 1997) and was appalled that they did not compete on mats. It was a rainy day that day, and the roof in the gym started to leak on the gym floor (right at half court. Their solution was not to postpone the competition, it was to put a trash can right there in the middle of the court and the teams would just have to "work around" it. I never judged for them again. They have lots of crazy rules. No mats, the first 30 seconds of your routine has to include a certain number of jumps and no dance, then the next so many seconds have to include certain things. It's very odd. They may not compete out of state, or on a Sunday-so that limits what comps they can go to. WV is not a cheer hotbed, so companies don't flock there for competitions. The only three places in the state big enough to host a major comp are WVU's Coliseum, the Civic Center in Charleston, or Marshall's arena.
 
Well I'm on my school's cheerleading team, and we do comp as well as sideline cheerleading, so this is what I know

Firstly two of the most well known high school cheering teams are Dunbar (watch cheerleader nation to learn more about them ), and greenup county ( read "We've Got Spirit: The Life & Time's of America's Greatest Cheerleading Team" by James T. McElroy, to learn more about them). I've read the book about Greenup, and watched all the episodes of Cheerleader Nation, both are very interesting.
A really good team in my area (greater boston), is Burlington High School. They scored a nearly perfect score (something like 96.5), at regionals, the highest every (I'm not sure if it was highest for our regionals, or or anyone's regionals). They are a town very centered arund their Pop Warner cheerleaders. There is a movie called "Blood, Sweat & Cheers", about the Pop Warner team competing, (similar to high school comp). My signature is from the movie! Burlington sells the movie at their competitions.
My School (Winchester High School ) is in Massachusetts, and we are all-girl however, if a boy wanted to, he could join. We compete on a flat mat,with no spring boards under us. We do basket tosses, and stunts, just like allstar squads do. We do dances in our routine, as well as a cheer. We also tumble. We cheer for Soccer, football, hockey and basketball.
Some of our girls come from All-star teams, most are from JAG and one girl is from East Celebrity Elite. Our town rival (also a fairly good cheerleading team ) Woburn has a coach who owns JAG so they practice and take tumbling classes there. Girls also tend to come from Pop Warner backgrounds.
You might have to ask a coach or ckeck rule books for certain things because I know that in some areas certain stunts are illegal.
If you have any questions or anything you would like to know about high school cheering (i don't know if you also wanted to know about sideline cheering or what), feel free to pm me!

I'M from MA as well, and Burlington isamazing. Also Whitman Hanson-those two are the best in the state IMO
 
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