- What They Do:
- The Corsair cheerleading squad cheers at every home football game, home men's basketball games, and home women's basketball games. At every game, the squad shows their support by performing a half-time routine and cheers during timeouts. The team shares their school spirit by performing at various UMD functions and rallies, as well as performing at local high schools competitions.
UMD is also a competitive squad, and currently competes as an All-Girl team. Each year, the team attends the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) Collegiate National Competition in Daytona Beach Florida. UMD has attended this competition twice and has won the Division II/III All-Girl Title both times (1999 and 2001).
The UMD cheerleaders are also involved with instructing hundreds of high school and elementary cheerleaders throughout the New England area by providing one and two day clinics. For more information about the services of the UMD cheerleaders, contact Coach Scott Bouchard.
- Tryouts:
- Tryouts are held every year in early September during the first week of school. This Fall, tryouts were held on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday September 5, 6, and 7, 2001 in Gym C at the Tripp Athletic Center from 6:30PM to 9:00PM each night.
UMD has open tryouts where all students are welcome. The only requirements needed to tryout are to be a student of UMass Dartmouth attempting at least 12 credit hours with non-Freshman having a GPA of 2.0 or higher, and to have a copy of your physical as well as verification of health insurance. Students will not be allowed to participate in tryouts without either of these.
- Tumbling: Cheerleaders are required to perform as standing backhandspring and a roundoff backhandspring.
- Jumps: Cheerleaders should have at least level (in height) jumps and should be able to perform advanced jumps (toe touch, side hurdler, front hurdler, pike)
- Cheer: Tryout participants will be asked to perform a sideline/chant so that motions can be evaluated.
- Stunts: At tryouts, participants are put into stunt groups and will work on several stunts so that judges can evaluated the stunting ability of each participant.
Tryouts are done with a relaxed atmosphere. Therefore, if a participant performed their jumps and felt that they were not done well, they will be allowed to do them again. Also, the coaches will walk around and talk with everyone. This helps the coaches get a better idea of who the individuals are and what their attitudes are like. Students will be selected based on their tumbling, jumps, attitude, arm motions, stunting, and ability to learn. Tryouts usually last between one to four days depending on how fast the coach can select the squad.
Returning cheerleaders from the past squad are required to try out every year. Even though the cheerleaders cheer for both football and basketball, it is considered one season. This means the same squad cheers for basketball that cheered for football. Therefore, there is only one tryout for the entire year. Students who transfer in for the spring semester may be able to get a "special" tryout given the discretion of the coach.
- Practices:
- TBA
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