The Cheer Coach

It hurts! When your child's heart is broken, yours is too. Let's be real, sometimes as parents we take things harder than our kids. However, we need to remember that our children watch how we react to things and sometimes learn more from our reactions than we would like.  As a coach I've seen many different parent reactions. Some are extremely positive and supportive and others (who also think they're being supportive, by the way) react a bit differently. One year a parent was so upset that her daughter didn't make a post-season competition team that she secretly tried to recruit my assistant coach to start a second team behind my back. Let's just say you can learn a lot about a person based on how they react to a decision that does not fall in their favor, especially when it involves their child. I mean, mama bear shirts were made for a reason, am I right?! :D Lord knows we've all had our moments, but it's so important to keep ourselves in check during

If your face during a routine reminds you of Ben Stein's dry eyes or the awkward kid with a pasted on, super fake smile in a meme, this article is for you. Seriously though, hopefully you'll find this article helpful to learn how to do facials or improve upon your current go-to looks. Vowels? First, raise your hand if your coach ever taught you the vowel method. If you're not raising your hand, have you really lived your best cheer life? Ha! All jokes of course. This training is a classic and to a certain extent, there is a place for this kind of training (or perhaps a variation.)  Maybe it's not as stiff and artificial as journeying back to early elementary, and repeating... "A-E-I-O-U", but instead pick just one or two go-to vowel sounds and create your own fun variation. Two of my favorites are mouthing the words "hey" (long a) or "hi" (long i) with an energetic attitude. There are a couple of reasons I believe people are starting to des