College Cheer Nationals: An Experience Like No Other

Going to National Cheerleading Association (NCA) College Nationals is one of the largest recruiting opportunities for college cheerleading coaches.  Along with competition, scholarships, travel expenses, priority housing are a few other opportunities available.  A little back history for those of you that aren't familiar with college competitions. Teams do not sign up to compete at College Nationals but actually have to earn a bid in order to qualify for Nationals. These bids come from summer camps and are partially paid bids:  gold, silver and bronze. There is one more option to qualify for Nationals and that's by sending in a video. Here's a link to more information on paid bids for NCA CollegeNationals: http://nca.s3.varsity.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Files/Competitions/Rules-Divisions/college_rule_book.pdf

As a college cheer team, our team strives to obtain a gold paid bid from summer camp; however, we are happy with a silver if we win one of those!  More bid information can be found here: https://www.varsity.com/publications/NCA-NDA-College-Camp.html#20-21

So let’s fast forward, we are preparing for Nationals from day 1 of tryouts.  It is imperative to recruit the most elite athletes to be on the mat at competition since we are only allowed 20 (11 men and 9 women) cheerleaders.  NCA’s motto is “The Work is Worth It”, honestly I cannot think of a better saying.
 

Competition isn’t the main focus for our collegiate team, however it is still important.  That being said, our day-to-day emphasis is supporting school events, cheering at athletic competitions, daily workouts, and study hall. Sometimes it seems that practicing for College Nationals is pushed to the back burner; however, this is the one thing that we get to do for ourselves so we make time for it.  From learning new skills and pushing each other while practicing for Nationals, we create team unity and we become more like a family.  Competition can either build you up or break you down...lucky for me I can say it has always built my team up.  As a coach, I can see this unbreakable bond when my team walks off of the competition mat - knowing they did everything they could in that moment and that they “left it all on the mat”.

Every cheerleader that I have had the pleasure of coaching said competing at NCA College Cheer Nationals was like no other competition they had ever experienced. Preparing the team veterans for the competition is easy, but it is difficult to prepare the rookies who have never competed at that level of competition before.  Each year we start over, we do our best to prepare them for one of the greatest moments in their college career - NCA College Cheer Nationals.  



Sources:  
Boggs, B. (2017, January 01). College Rule Book for College Teams. Retrieved March 01, 2017, from http://nca.s3.varsity.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Files/Competitions/Rules-Divisions/college_rule_book.pdf

Boggs, B. (2017, February 20). Paid Bids. Retrieved March 01, 2017, from https://www.varsity.com/publications/NCA-NDA-College-Camp/assets/basic-html/page-20-21.html#