The Benicia Youth Football Panthers fields four Cheer Squads based on age.  Full squads are composed of 20 Cheerleaders, Coached by two Junior Coaches and two Adult Coaches. Just as in Football where girls are welcome, boys are welcome in Cheer.

Cheer Squads by age
(age as of August 1^st, 2010)

As the maximum squad size is set by the conference at 20 cheerleaders, if more than 20 cheerleaders try-out some must be released following the Cheer Try-Outs.  Released cheerleaders will receive a refund on their Try-Out Fee. Sign-ups are also being taken now for Junior Coaches, girls (or boys) ages 14 to 17 with Cheer and/or Dance experience, contact the Panthers via email or the hotline.

 Practices

All practices are held at Benicia High School and official practice begins August 2nd.   Practices run five nights a week, Monday thru Friday, from 5 pm to 7 pm the entire month of August.  After the first game (September 8th), practices move to three nights per week, with the days picked at the discretion of the head coach.  As the season progress and the days grow shorter practices move to 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm. The initial week of practice is conditioning week, which includes strength and endurance training. Cheerleaders wear their cheer practice tees and shorts.  After the first week, or ten full hours of conditioning, cheerleaders begin practicing cheers. It is important for your athlete to bring plenty of water to practice, one to two bottles or a small cooler.  The coaches do not have water available for those players who neglect to bring their own.  Juice, soda and sugary drinks are not appropriate to keep your athlete well hydrated.  Proper nutrition is also important.  Players should eat a nutritious snack or meal at least 2 hours before practice.

Jamboree

Games

The Panthers will play nine games this season, four at home and five away.  The game dates and locations can be found on the Calendar section of the website.  It is extremely important that all Cheerleaders be on time for their game, assembling and stretching takes time and late players upset the integrity of the squad.  Home game times are as follows, please be aware that away game times may be slightly different:

Games generally take 1.5 hours and consist of 4 ten minute quarters and a ten-minute halftime.

 Cheer Camp

Our Panthers cheerleaders attend a Cheer Camp at the beginning of the season to start the year off with lots of fun, spirit and training in cheer and half-time techniques and routines.  Stay tuned to the calendar for information on Cheer Camp. 

It is the Panthers philosophy that cheerleaders in youth sports want to have fun first and secondly want to learn how to perform cheers, stunts and half-time routines.  The opportunity to showcase their cheer skills comes at Cheer Competitions. The DVYFC requires that all teams in the League compete in the DVYFC Davis Cheer Competition.  This Competition is held at UC Davis and lasts an entire day.  The date for the Competition this year will be November .

There are also a number of other Competitions held in the Bay Area that our cheerleaders may want to attend.  At the beginning of the season our parents, athletes, coaches and board will decide as a group whether to participate.  Should the majority want to participate, it will require that all cheerleaders attend as a squad as a partial squad cannot compete.  Some of these upcoming Competitions are:

Playoffs

Playoffs are held in November for the teams with the best records and a champion team is determined at each level at the annual Turkey Bowl.
DVYFC COMPETITION GUIDELINES

Information regarding the date and time for our upcoming pre-Davis meeting will be sent out shortly. In the meantime the following guidelines will help you to begin to prepare for Davis. The timing for Performance Cheer will be 1 minute 30 seconds long to 2 minutes long and Performance Dance must be the same. No stunts or tumbling in dance. No props allowed in dance. Signs are OK in cheer.

You must rally on. Having said that, there was some confusion last year regarding timing for many cities so we want to be clear that everyone understands timing. After you rally on, timing starts at the first beat of music, first clap or first organized word of cheer or the first movement and will stop with the end of the cheer or last note of music.

For those of you doing ShowCheer the time is the same, 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. However,you may NOT use any part of what you will have used in your Performance Cheer or Dance, depending on which you opt to do. The ShowCheer must be a completely separate routine. You may execute cheers of your choice using a combination of music and words. The music portion cannot be more than half of the routine length (1:00) example if routine is 2:00 minutes long. Each section will be timed separately. After your cheer portion make sure to have your music cued as close as you possibly can to the beginning of your next dance portion. That way there is no chance of dragging out your cheer portion of timing, which could result in being over your time.

*******************************************

BACK