If you’re like me, on Monday, my newsfeed was filled with owners celebrating their teams’ victories over the weekend. I saw many first places, level champs, grand champs, and bid winners flooding my feed.
The perception on social media is that everyone is winning but me. The reality is – every weekend about 90 percent of the industry loses. In order to have first place winners, we also need second, third, and fourth places. In deep and highly competitive divisions like youth 1 and junior 2, it’s pretty common to even see eighth and ninth places.
For obvious reasons, we’re often not seeing those owners posting about the successes of their teams and still celebrating on Monday morning. For that reason, I’m here to give some realities.
My youth 2 is really good. Like – I’d say when it comes to natural talent, they may be one of my most talented groups of kids in the whole gym. We set the team up with success in mind. They’ve already seen two injuries, strep, and influenza A this season. Their first competition was a scratch with too many kids out, and their second was a struggle – coming in 5th place.
I honestly didn’t care that they didn’t win. When their half-turn tick didn’t hit, the backspot stabilized the stunt and safely smooshed. When their ½ up inversion to heel didn’t hit, the main base called the shots and the hit went up – allowing 75 percent of the pyramid to still hit. I was so proud of them. They kept going. All too often in practice, something doesn’t hit during a full out, and they look at me and freeze. That’s their vice. They’re so eager to please, that they are looking for direction, so my main focus with them hasn’t been skills. It has been troubleshooting. On my teams, I always pick one person who is in charge of calling the shots if a stunt has issues. The rest of the group takes this person’s instructions – whether it’s the right call or not.
I’m teaching my team both how to lead – and how to follow. All too often we’re worried about teaching kids leadership alone when the reality is – being a great follower is just as important of a skill.
We obviously didn’t take first with those mistakes. As much as I like to win, I didn’t care one bit. The kids demonstrated skills that will take them so much farther in life than a win alone. They demonstrated skills they’ll still be using 20 years from now.
So when you’re looking toward the next competition, I understand if your goal is first place. After all, we’re in this sport because we like to win. But I also want you to look for those intangible victories – the ones that can’t be calculated on a scoresheet. My friends who are judges have told me they see when teams are being coached in these skills, and while they’re not directly judged, the ability to pick back up after a fall is ultimately more important than the 3.9 difficulty you’re looking for on the scoresheet.
If you’re a newer, younger coach without kids of your own, you may not be totally on board with this yet. I understand that. Before I had kids, I was a totally different coach. I had a long conversation about this with an owner yesterday who doesn’t have kids of his own – but he has fully embraced that this sport is about way more than just winning. The longer you’re in cheer, the more you’ll see the impact you have on kids outside of scoring.
