When you loose a large portion of your team due to the sudden departure of your head coach what can you do?

During my daughter’s third season with her all star squad our 20-year-old assistant coach was unceremoniously thrust into the role of head coach at our gym. With eight cheerleaders left we were at a crossroads. Do we take our kids to one of the other local teams or put our faith in our very sweet, but very young coach?

We chose to stay and try to piece the program back together for the benefit of our kids. This wasn’t an easy task, but it became a mission for every one of us. We offered our unconditional support to our newly minted director and barreled head first into rebuilding our teams. Every single parent advertised, passed out flyers and talked non-stop about the “new” program. We changed our team name to give us a fresh start, designed new uniforms with new colors and found a wonderful assistant coach.

Our coaches were able to concentrate on coaching and building our new athletes’ skills while we handled the paperwork and advertising. We banded together to build a family atmosphere for the cheerleaders by scheduling beach parties, pool parties, sleepovers, pizza parties or almost anything we could think of to help the team members and their parents bond. Now in our third season, we are 55 members strong with 5 coaches! We are still a small team, but we are consistently growing every year.

This season we are anticipating a very large crowd at tryouts. Our parents still provide the same support they have since the beginning and we wouldn’t have it any other way.