How to Fit Competitive Cheerleading into Your Life

Being a competitive cheerleader is tough‚ in more ways than you know! You already know that being in competitive cheer is not a sport, it’s a lifestyle and that means it’s a 24-hour job. You eat, breathe, sweat, and dream cheerleading, so it comes as no surprise that you have little time for anything else. However, you somehow have to coordinate other areas of your life into the mix, like school! You might get overwhelmed when competition season is at its peak, but there are certain strategies to go about managing your time effectively and organizing your schedule accordingly. You obviously can’t put your schoolwork on the backburner as you compete, and you probably want to have some fun with your friends, so here are four guides to master the art of juggling competitive cheerleading. It’s true‚ cheerleaders just want to have fun. Although you engage in a physically and mentally demanding sport, at the end of the day, it’s all about having fun while you do it. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t continue cheering! Competitive cheerleading might be a little more demanding than fun, especially compared to sideline or recreational teams, so you might have to find your fun elsewhere. But, how? If competitive cheer takes up the majority of your free time, than you may start to feel disconnected from your friends. Never fear: you just have to learn how to juggle competitive cheer with your social life in order to strike a balance between work and play! As natural born athletes, cheerleaders often branch out into other sports on top of cheerleading. For sideline cheerleaders, this might mean simply coordinating practices and missing a few games here and there. For competitive cheerleaders, however, long cheer practices and a multitude of team activities often prevent cheerleaders from participating in anything else‚ let alone another sport. Reference this guide to juggling competitive cheer with other sports if another activity is beckoning you, so it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Competition season falls right in the midst of second semester in school, and you might begin to have trouble going full out and finishing your homework in one night! Cheerleaders have certain expectations to excel in school with good grades, so letting your schoolwork slide is not the smartest thing to do. You don’t want to be kicked off your team as a result! If this all sounds familiar (or if you want to start some preventative measures to avoid this kind of situation), then consult this guide to be successful at both school and competitive cheerleading. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader‚ but, what happens when you want to cheer for a sideline team during competition season? How do you choose between cheer teams in the middle of the year, after cheering throughout the fall semester for your school? Don’t worry‚ there are ways to coordinate both without letting either team or coach down. You just have to research how to juggle sideline with competitive cheerleading, as well as anticipate being busy! What other activities to you have to juggle as a competitive cheerleader? Let us know how you manage your time and schedule in the comments below!