Hmmmm. Yet another example of me being out of touch with the reality of cheer moms I guess. Really?! I say it's a group effort but when my coach asks me something, but my default answer is always and has always been, "whatever you think." (that answer also goes for placement in the routines, positions on the floor and what skills theyre working on etc.).
the only thing I want to ensure the varsity rep gets about my kid is that my daughter does NOT like it when there's separation between the top and bottom (were full tops at Aviator and my daughter simply demands that, a half top uniform is basically a deal breaker for her and she's a fit kid, she's just really modest, she wears a black bodysuit underneath so if the top rides up, she's still covered) and that my son grew 9 inches in 18 months and hasnt slowed up yet. Hes not modest at all...he's also put on 50 pounds of muscle, is freakin ripped and makes me take the sleeves off all His practice shirts >eyeroll< They're usually happy to add inches for both and, kabam, we're done. As for how everything else fits...."whatever you think."
The more I hear from coaches on this board the more I realize how in the minority I must be. My kid are at practice every single day, i dont coach them from the sidelines other than parroting what ive heard their coaches say) were either direct draft or paid in full up front, And our entire philosophy is "team first" even if that means my kid is in the back row. Aside from that, ive never been a cheerleader in my life so i dont pretend to understand half of what they do, even though I've educated myself on score sheets enough over the last two years to score divisions and at least on a varsity sheet, I've gotten really Daggum good at it! At king of the jungle I not only got all of our teams in the right placement, I got the entire division (except mini 1) in the right order too. :)
They're building a wall to wall off the parent section from the floor at our gym and there is much discussion in the parent section about it. I don't care...they have big mirrored glass windows they're putting in, and I don't care....my response was....if this gets my kid one step closer to a cheersport jacket, I say make the windows portholes for all I care. The only thing that is sad is the parent section would sometimes break out in cheering when a kid hits a new skill or the stunt groups just learned a new sequence and all hit it and we'd shout a lot of "atta boys" and great jobs...but my kids say there are other parents shouting coaching from the sidelines, I never hear that but I tend to avoid people that annoy me...and that kind of thing would annoy me :)
It is and has always been about my kids and if I didn't trust their coaches (now that I know what real coaching looks like) we'd be somewhere else. So we bring our kids, I cut my checks and have faith that what they're doing...even if I don't get it sometimes...which happens a lot I might add....is what's best for my CPs progression and success.
I'm learning that is far less the norm than I thought it was.
