Cheerleading Rules
Learning the Cheerleading Rules
Cheerleading is a serious sport in its own right, which comes with its own set of cheerleading rules. It’s much more than just girls bounding around in short skirts at a sporting event. Cheerleading takes a lot of heart and skill to accomplish successfully.
Cheerleading rules from the National Cheerleading Association require all teams to follow NCAA football classifications when figuring out which division they belong in. Cheerleading teams at colleges that don’t have a football program follow the NCAA divisions for basketball instead.
The cheerleading rules are also very specific on the size and type of floor the teams must perform on. It must be 42 feet deep and 54 feet wide and made up of a carpeted gymnastics floor mat. The flooring underneath the mat must be either concrete or wood. Any cheerleaders who step outside the performance area will receive penalties for their team.
The routine must last less than two minutes and 15 seconds, according to the cheerleading rules, and it may include music for all or part of it. However, the recorded music should not include any words that will help the team’s cheers sound louder while they’re performing. The time for each team’s routine starts with the first organized sound or movement from any team member.
According to the cheerleading rules, it’s always a good idea to highlight the skills of all your team members by focusing on their strengths. For example, if you have several team members who are good at tumbling, make sure you include a good section of tumbling in your routine. Try to avoid any trouble techniques for your team (if any), although it’s always a good idea to put together a good mixture of stunts, jumps, pyramids, and dance into your routine. The judges will surely notice if your team is lacking in any area, so try to cover all the bases.
The cheerleading rules also limit what kind of props may be used during competitions. Flags, banners, megaphones, pom poms, and signs can be part of the routine, although anything with poles may not be used as part of a stunt or tumbling act.
Crowd participation is also an important part of all college cheerleading competitions. Each team performs 45 seconds of material that gets the crowd involved when they enter the mat for the preliminary part of their performance. Crowd participation can include any methods to get everyone to stand up, clap, or make any type of cheering noises. Technical skills are not really needed for the crowd participation portion of the competition and should be kept to a minimum.
The team’s routine begins immediately after the 45 seconds of crowd participation are up. The boundary is in effect for both the crowd control and the routine portions of the competition. This just means that no team member can cross the boundary or reach out of bounds, even to retrieve a prop. It’s alright if the props extend out of bounds while they’re being held during the routine.