Students with Special needs!

[coachbattle]

Has anyone had a child with Special needs (i.e. Down Syndrome) try out for their squad?  I placed a girl with Down Syndrome on the JV team at the High School I coached at last year and everyone loved it!  Unfortunately, I moved schools and the news coaches are claiming she does not belong on the team.  I'd love to know if anyone has dealt with this, or has someone with special needs on their team and how it's going!

[melanie8923]

I do not have anyone on my team currently but would definitely be open to it.  We do have a special needs team at the all star gym I coach at with about 20 kids on it so a lot of kids in our area go that direction.  I would be honored if a family thought enough of my program to let their son or daughter do my team.

Melanie

[ucaCHEERalum]

I think that its great that you were open minded enough to allow a student with special needs on to one of your squads.  Thats fantastic.  It could be a real growth experience not only for your special cheerleader but for those around her as well. 

Ofcourse, this requires a special kind of coach too!   

Don't be too hard on the new coach though...maybe they aren't as comfortable coaching people with special needs (this can take a super human level of patience at times) or maybe they're taking the program in a different direction (competition = change in requirements).  Hopefully your special cheerleader can find another way to be involved at school. 

[coachbattle]

Thanks for your repsonses! A few clarifications..

The school has a varsity and JV squad.  Last year when I coached the varsity squad was highly competetive, attending UCA Nationals in February.  The JV team did not compete, so we thought that would be the best fit for this girl!  The teams are about the same this year, with varsity competing and JV not. 

Also, this girl is 100% a cheerleader!  She learns all the cheers/chants, has a better jump prep and form than most cheerleaders I know, and can do a round off!

I feel guilty that my leaving has left this girl off the team.  She does not understand why she got to cheer last year and can't this year.

I would love to pass on any ideas for including her to the new coach... or stories of success at another school!

[ACEDAD]

Coachbattle,

Until a couple of months ago, I was the Chairman of the USASF Special Needs Committee.  I've run across your situation a number of times and I can understand your frustration as well as the position of the coach.  Most of the time the solution ends up finding an all star gym with a special needs team to help accomodate the special needs athlete.  From the school's perspective, they have to deal with the possibility of accomodating 1 special needs athlete creating the need to accomodate dozens.  It also creates a problem of having other students that tried out and didn't make the team causing a ruckus over applying the rules differently.

We've had one athlete on my special needs team at ACE that cheered for us and for her high school without any problems or anyone questioning the issue.  We had another athlete that wanted to do the same thing for her middle school and they wouldn't bend ANY of the rules for the reason I mention above.

With all that said, the growth in special needs teams across the US, Canada & England has been phenomenal since we started the first team in 2001.  There are now more than 170 teams and no sign of slowing down.  If you want inspirational stories, email me at bill.presson@gmail.com.  I used to send everyone to the special needs section of USASF.net, but they are revamping the site and the media files aren't currently available.

[coachbattle]

Thank you for your note... I believe this young lady may pursue all star or special olympic cheerleading, the sad part is that she has true school spirit.  She loves cheerleading as a sport but what raelly make her happy is putting on the school uniform and representing her school and cheering for her friends!!

[RPCmme]

This is our second year with a special needs squad member.  She has cheered both her junior year and now, her senior year.  She went to tryout clinics just like all applicants.  We do a mock tryout on Thursday night of our tryout week, and that is her tryout.  She does not go through the stress of the actual tryout in the gym one-on-one.

She attends the first couple of practices at the begining of school to serve as a refresher on our sideline chants and fight song.  She does NOT participate in stunts or pep assembly performances.  She is at our pep assemblies and does the fight song and class chants, but not the stunting and tumbling performance.  She attends home games only. The Kansas City Star, our city's newspaper, did a Satuday front-page story on her this past fall. 

At first, I didn't know what to expect.  My advice would be to have a meeting (first) with the special needs child's parent, your athletic director, and yourself.  Discuss the expectations and set-up what the special needs student's involvement would look like.  If there's an accord, try to make his/her experience as similar to that of a mainstream squad member.  Cheerleading is a life experience and a life-long memory--do all you can do to create that scenario for one of your school's students!  Now, I know what to expect and would embrace a situation in the future of the same nature.