Help Your Gymnasts Earn the Recognition They Deserve
Enough of the theoretical basis for doing it.  What practical ways exist to provide gymnasts  with the recognition they rightfully earn by training year-round, 5 - 6 days per week, for hours per day and for reaching a high percentile of athletic success?  If you are losing gymnasts to cheerleading, can that cycle be altered?

Begin an Active Campaign
The solution is to actively create a campaign to raise the exposure of your gymnasts in the local community and media.  One of the most successful and productive methods of doing this is to sponsor and regularly participate in gymnastics exhibitions.  Exhibitions in a school setting are the best - high school basketball half times, school assemblies, PTA meetings and events, school fundraiser events and the like are ideal.  They target the same peer group that cheerleading does.

Do Exhibitions
Gymnastics exhibitions at school related functions put the gymnasts in front of their peers in a positive situation as the focus of attention and show off their relative high competency level.  Even at other school sport events, like half-time exhibitions, the gymnastics is the complete focal point for a significant period of time.  Gymnasts may get even more temporary attention than the cheerleaders get, working primarily around on the sidelines, as they do and at a lower level of skill.

Cheers for Your Gymnasts
In fact, it is not uncommon for cheerleaders to eventually become support for your gymnasts to stay where they are.  Cheerleaders know more than most about the difficulty level of skills gymnasts are doing.  They are doing low level gymnastics and have tried to do more and been comparatively unsuccessful as compared to your team members.  They often will go out of their way to congratulate gymnasts and share how they wish they could do what your team members are doing.

Do Basketball Half-Time Shows
You should actively work to do a high school basketball half-time show at each of the high schools in your area every year.  Work to get on the schedule of the games when  the biggest rivalries, especially cross town rivalries, happen.  There may be thousands of people watching your gymnasts at a game like that.  That certainly beats Mom and Dad and Grandma being the sole cheering section at a local gymnastics meet.

Previous Page    Continued Next Page 
 
 

GymnasticsZone.com 321 West 13th Street Suite 4 Idaho Falls, ID 83402 (480) 264-1885 webmaster@GymnasticsZone.com

Copyright © GymnasticsZone, Inc. 2003