Question:

For those of you who have both a dance team and cheerleaders, can you please let me know how you decide who gets to travel to post-season play, especially in regards to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Also, does anyone just send your dance team to these events?

Thanks for your time and feedback.
-Guy Gaster, Louisiana State University

Responses:

I believe we almost always send either our cheer or dance team on the road for post season basketball play. I am pretty sure it's a limit of 12 individuals though. Our cheer/dance coach usually decides who to send and tries to rotate which team is represented so that the kids don't miss that many days of class. Sometimes they might not be able to be excused from a class, and then they substitute someone else. Yes, we have sent our dance team on the road with the team(s); last year they were even asked to dance at halftime during our conference tournament, and they may have even done so at the NIT Championships. If both men and women are playing postseason like last year, they sometimes only send 6 cheer/dance kids based on the schedule and the need to have people at 2 games. We have a pretty large squad of cheerleaders, though only 14 dancers, but budget will play a role also in how many we send.

Hope that helps!
- Sue Buerskens, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Cheerleaders travel with FB to away games and post-season WBB and MBB tournament games. Our dance team is an at-home squad only.
- Joel Rasmus, Purdue University

At SIU we send 6 of each group and they work together to make it work.
- Mike Trude, Southern Illinois University

My name is Vera Branch and I'm the Spirit Squad Coach for the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. I use to send my entire dance team. This year I would like to send 6 cheer and 6 dance members. I think this would be a better use of the floor.
Thank you,
- Vera E. Branch, University of Nebraska

Hi Guy - we will be bringing both cheerleaders and dance team to the SEC tournament, but not to NCAA's. When it comes to NCAA's my policy is to bring the full cheer squad and not do a split thing. When we split the squads it takes us out of our game plan - 1/2 the cheer squad cannot do their material SAFELY and can't do most of it at all and 1/2 of the dance squad is not enough to perform at a halftime (which for us is their main responsibility during basketball). In the NCAA's you are still trying to motivate the crowd and help the basketball team advance and that is the first priority of the cheerleaders. If we were fortunate enough to get to the FINAL FOUR that would be another issue and I would certainly hope to be able to take both squads as a reward for a job well done whether I would take split squads if I couldn't take everyone would be decided if/ when we get to that point.

My squads know before they tryout that the cheerleaders are the "travel squad" and the pom squad gets all the home halftime performances (except one) and pom will attend a bowl game (if travel distance/method permit) and the SEC tournament (we always take a chartered bus). The remainder of all travel is cheer only. If travel is very important to a student they need to tryout for cheer, just a dance performance is for pom.

I will also bring four mascots to SEC (they each take a 10 minute portion of the game) tournament, but NCAA's will be Big Red for the rest of the way.

Hope that helps - I'd love to have copies of your replies for my files if you don't mind.

GO HOGS!

Hey Guy. Hope everything is going well down there.

For the SEC Tournaments, we send cheerleaders. We have 2 squads so one goes with the men and one with the women. If the dance team has enough money in their fundraising account, we let them go to the men's tournament as well. However, they only perform at halftime, we don't give them any of the spots that the SEC allows on the floor during the game. For NCAA play, we send cheerleaders only.

Hope that helps.

Take care and we'll see you in Atlanta.
- Mike Richey, Mississippi State


The following link provides a list of the Dance Team travel policies for several institutions -- Dance Team Travel