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Speaking Teenager: A Cheer Coach’s Guide to Earning a Senior Team’s Respect
Working with teenagers is different from any other age group, and if you don’t speak teenager, it can be really hard. Hey guys, and welcome to this episode of the Fullout Cheer Podcast. I’m Danielle, and I’m excited to be talking to you today about working with teenagers — whether that’s your junior teams, but really I’m going to focus on senior teams today.
I’ve raised three older stepkids who were teenagers and are now graduated and out of the house. I have a 16-year-old, and we’ve hosted five exchange students who were all 16 and up. On top of that, I’ve been coaching senior teams for over ten years. So I feel like I speak teenager these days, but I’ll be honest — it was so hard to speak teenager when my kids were little.
Today I want to talk about how to earn respect as a senior coach, and how to respect your athletes in a way that they love and care about you as a coach, so you can work together effectively as a team.
Why Coaching Seniors Is a Different Skill Entirely
Coaching senior athletes is so different. A couple of years ago I coached a mini team alongside a senior team. Last year I coached a youth two team alongside my senior three. This year I’m coaching a junior three and my senior four team, and I can tell you the difference between junior and senior is significant — even though there are a couple of true teenagers on that junior team, it’s still a different vibe. It’s a different mentality I have to walk in with. On the junior team, I can push a little harder with how direct I am, how firm my tone is, and how strictly I stick to the lesson plan. On the senior team, you can have a lesson plan all day long, and then you get there and half the kids’ brains are somewhere else entirely, which absolutely impacts how effective that practice can be.
These teenagers are not elementary or middle school kids, and they don’t want to be treated as such. Years ago I had a coach who was also a preschool teacher during the day, and she’d come to senior practice and ask, “Does anyone need to go potty before we start?” The kids loved and respected her, but you could see them smirk a little, like, “Coach, we’re not five.” They want to be treated like adults, even though they’re not quite adults yet.
Here’s the thing, though — even at 16 and 17, these kids still enjoy being close to their parents from time to time, even if they’d never admit it. There’s still a kid in there who loves that childlike fun. My exchange student this year is a senior, and he’s been playing Senior Assassin — a game where kids chase each other with water guns — with a group of friends. I’ve seen kids running around the Walmart parking lot at night trying to soak each other during what they call “the purge” week at the high school. These are 17- and 18-year-olds playing a game that eight-year-olds play. That’s the balance: they want to be treated like adults, but they still have this childlike joy underneath it all.
These are kids who live rent-free with very few real-world worries — not all of them, of course, some have genuinely hard home lives — but in general, they’re not paying the electric bill or working 40 hours a week. They still need to be told what to do, over and over. This morning, I told my daughter she needed to leave the house by 7 a.m. because our state has a rule that a tardy without a doctor’s note means no game that night. At 7:04, she still wasn’t out the door, insisting she’d left at 7:12 the day before and it was fine. I told her, “You’re assuming you won’t hit a red light, that the train won’t be there, that nobody will be in an accident ahead of you.” Teenagers learn by their own experience, not somebody else’s. It doesn’t matter how many other kids get a speeding ticket — mine will speed until she gets her own.
Why Teenagers Struggle to See Cause and Effect
Teenagers often have to be coached through problem and consequence — by parents, coaches, and every important adult in their life — because they genuinely can’t see cause and effect the way adults do. As a parent, I can tell my daughter that speeding again means losing her car for two weeks, because I know as an adult that her insurance will skyrocket after a second ticket. But if I only warn her about a long-term consequence she can’t visualize, it won’t land. She needs the immediate cause and effect.
I can’t tell an athlete, “Don’t be late to practice or you might get injured during warm-up,” because their brain can’t fully process a consequence with only a small chance of happening. But I can say, “Don’t be late, or you’ll stay behind and condition at the end of practice,” because that’s immediate. Understanding that gap is key to coaching this age group well.
Three Keys to Coaching Teenagers Differently
So how do you coach this age group differently than tiny, mini, youth, or even junior athletes? Here are three things that took me years to learn.
Number one: patience and self-reflection. You either speak teenager or you don’t, but you can acquire the skill if you’re patient with yourself. You’re going to make mistakes. There are still times I say something that upsets one of my athletes, and I sit back afterward and ask myself if I could have handled it differently. Sometimes the answer is no — but probably 80% of the time, I realize that if I’d said it another way, I could have gotten through to that kid more effectively. Reflecting after friction is the only way to actually get better at coaching this age group, even if you think you’re already good at it.
A great example: the first week of school is always a rough week for effective practices. Kids go from total summer freedom — some traveling, some just relaxing, all of them glued to their phones for hours a day — to a school schedule where they can’t touch their phone between 7:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. That’s a hard transition. If I walk into practice that week expecting model citizens and model cheerleaders, that’s on me for not preparing for where they actually are.
Number two: tone does not always mean what you think it does. Some teenagers — including a couple of my own kids and exchange students — genuinely don’t have great vocal tone, and you’ll ask if they’re upset when they’re not, or miss that they are upset when their tone sounds fine. Don’t assume. Just ask directly: “Your tone was confusing me just now — are you good?” Teenagers are usually pretty honest with you if you give them the chance to clarify.
Number three: accept that their effort is going to be different every single day, and that doesn’t mean they’re not giving their 100%. The first week of school, the effort I got from my athletes was maybe 60% of what they’re truly capable of — and that’s because their 100% is separated by just 24 hours from the last day of summer. Their best effort looks different when they’re sick, when they’re going through something at home, or even after a fight with mom before practice. We are so much more than coaches — we’re taking these kids through some of the most formative years of their lives and teaching them how to adult, and we can do that with friction or with love.
Three Ways to Make a Teenager Shut Down
Let’s talk about what makes teenagers shut down and stop giving you effort, because in their minds, they feel like they’re being cussed out even when that’s not your intention at all.
Public correction is the first one. Corey Rickett was at my gym recently doing a staff training, and he made a great point: this generation does not handle public correction well. They struggle to feel confident when corrected in front of their peers. Now, that doesn’t mean you pull an athlete aside for every single skill correction — your practices would run seven hours long. Instead, build a growth mindset culture where everyone is getting corrections and everyone is getting genuine praise for good attitude or a well-applied correction, not just empty praise for showing up on time.
Where I do avoid public correction is around tone and overstepping. I had a back spot correcting her flyer mid-air recently while I was standing right there. In the moment, I just said, “Got it,” and kept things moving. Later, during a water break, I pulled her aside privately and explained that once we’re on the competition floor and I can’t be heard, that correction is hers to make — but right now, in August, let me be the one to make it, because it’ll land better coming from me. I explained why, because when you just tell a kid not to do something without explaining it, you’re not preparing them for life. She’s going to think twice next time, not because she was embarrassed in front of the team, but because she understood.
Targeting kids with group statements is the second shutdown trigger. If one or two kids show up without practice wear and I tell the whole team to “make sure you’re wearing practice wear,” every other kid on the team turns and looks at those two kids. It’s essentially a public correction disguised as a general announcement, and this generation feels that targeting acutely — kids are fiercely loyal to each other, and their friends notice too. Instead, pull those two kids aside privately: “Hey, I need you in practice wear so I can actually see the details of your routine and make sure we’re scoring well.” Most teenagers are reasonable once you explain the why, but you can’t assume they already understand it.
Ignoring an athlete who’s hit her limit is the third. I once had an athlete brand new to our gym who came in with a layout, on a level three team — exactly where she needed to be. But after a couple of weeks, she stopped hitting skills, and I don’t think it was injury-related. I think she was working through everything that comes with being new at a school as a sophomore. I pulled her mom aside and said, “I want to know if what you’re seeing is her genuinely at her limit right now, because I don’t want to push her past it and watch her shut down completely.” That conversation mattered. If I’d instead told that athlete she came in with a layout and I expected a tuck by now, I think I would have had a kid who struggled with me as a coach all season. When kids already feel insecure, piling on only adds to it — so recognize the limit, and don’t push past it just to check a box as a coach.
How to Actually Earn a Teenager’s Respect
If you’re a 20-something coach working with seniors, it can feel amazing some days and really hard on others. Here’s the first truth: you can’t make anyone respect you. You can only earn it. Little kids will often respect you simply because of your position — mini and youth athletes see their coach almost like a celebrity. Teenagers don’t work that way. You have to earn their respect, and if you lose it, it can take real time to get it back. Nobody gets a fresh start on a relationship just because a new season rolled around; relationships are built, and respect is earned.
Second: your athletes have to feel loved and important above anything else. One of my biggest pet peeves in this sport is threatening an athlete’s position — “I put you on senior four, but you’ll move to junior three if you can’t do this layout.” There’s a real difference between asking, “Am I putting too much pressure on you with this pass?” out of genuine care, and threatening to pull someone from a pass because of the pressure. Athletes need to feel valued no matter what role they’re playing.
Public comparison doesn’t help either. This year, our senior four had athletes who missed a lot of practice over the summer for family and travel reasons — my own daughter included, who missed nearly the entire month of July. The team is genuinely talented but has some catching up to do. The conversation I didn’t have was, “You’d better work harder because everyone else is ahead of you.” I’ve had that conversation before, and it never motivated anyone. Instead, I told them I thought they’d had a great summer, that we were a little behind where we needed to be for this point in the season, and that I needed them locked in when we came back. Same message, completely different result. It also doesn’t hurt to speak a little of their language — my teenagers still laugh when I use their slang correctly, even if I don’t always get it right.
Beyond that, look for small ways to show your athletes they matter. I had an athlete traveling who was going to miss a choreography change, so instead of letting her come back to something unfamiliar, I filmed the new formation and sent it to her so she wouldn’t feel blindsided. I had an athlete become an Eagle Scout after years of missing a week of cheer every summer for camp, and I made sure to celebrate that milestone publicly, because it mattered to him. Show your kids that what matters to them, matters to you too.
Fourth: don’t pit two things that are important to them against each other if you can avoid it. Scheduling a competition on prom night, or a banquet on the same day as a boyfriend’s prom at another school, creates a conflict that’s genuinely painful for a teenager to navigate. Before scheduling a competition this year, I called six different school districts to find out prom dates so I could avoid conflicts — and for the one school that couldn’t tell me in time, I went directly to the families affected, explained the situation, and let them decide. When I couldn’t move a banquet date around a boyfriend’s prom at another school, I still found a way to reschedule that athlete’s senior speech so she could get to both. You can’t always avoid the conflict, but when you try, your athletes notice, and they respect it.
You Don’t Have to Be an Expert — Just Willing to Grow
I’m certainly no expert at coaching seniors — my 16-year-old would probably tell you the same thing — but it’s something I’ve grown into over the years. I’ve watched other coaches get placed into this age group simply because they’re the owner, the coach, and the front desk all in one, or because it’s the only spot available, even when their strengths are with younger athletes. If that’s you, have patience with these teenagers. Self-reflect. Give them grace, and help them understand when something isn’t working, and why. Find the win-win: how does the athlete win, and how do you win as a coach? Usually, that looks like partnering with the parent to help guide that kid into adulthood.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. If you haven’t checked it out yet, we just started a group on Skool for cheer gym owners and coaches who want to learn how to use AI in their gyms. Dan and I will be running the group and helping you outsource some of the repetitive work you’re doing every day. Head over to our podcast page at nextgenowners.com/podcast for the link. Thanks again for joining me, and I’ll see you on the next episode of the Fullout Cheer Podcast.
