Tonight during a varsity girls game the visitors bench would begin to cheer in unison, DEFENSE & then clap, clap. At the first dead ball I asked the coach to have them knock it off. She asked for a rule citation and I gave her bench personel are free to rise and spontaneusly cheer a play. I told her her teams cheer was not spontaneous, rule 10-4. My partner and I talked about it and both agreed. They are either players or cheerleaders. How are you handling this situation?

Were they standing? If not, I don't know what the problem is and I don't know what rule they would be breaking.

Z

If all they're doing is set cheers like that, I'd let it go. As long as it's not taunting or harassment, it's no big deal in my book. Frankly, one of my pet peeves is the number of schools that don't send cheerleaders to the girls' games, so if the girls feel like filling in, I don't have a problem with it (as long as it's just the noise they're making, and not the jumping and motions!).

The only exception would be disconcertion. If they are affecting a free throw shooter, just award a substitute throw.

There is no rule against bench personel cheering....only that they must be seated. The spontaneous part of what you cited refers to <b>standing</b> to cheer a good play...not cheering while seating.

Absolutely no rule against it. And cheering for your <b>own</b> team can hardly be deemed unsporting.

You were way off-base on this one.

Agreed !!!

Let 'em cheer
 

They weren't doing anything against the rules. The "coreographed celebration" rule is in the NFL. On the other hand, I had a whole team bench do the infamous "AAAAIIIIIRBAAALLLL" when an opposing player missed aggregiously. That got my attention.

Do not feel bad about that. Cheerleaders are overrated. I would rather not have them at all in games. They get in the way. They stand right one the end line. I am bumping into them just to get an angle on the play and many are too dumb to realize they could back up a little bit. They stand in two rows on the end line as if they could not afford to back up when you are running full speed concentrating on the court. Then you have to dodge them during timeouts so you do not get run over when they do flips. Trust me on this one. Be very thankful you do not see them that much. They could take them completely out of the HS game and I would not get upset at all. They only time they are even worth having around is when you have tons of room on the end line and there is not a wall within 20 feet of the court.

Peace

[Edited by JRutledge on Jan 7th, 2006 at 03:52 PM]

AMEN!
 

AMEN to that, JRut! Especially in small gyms. Once I had a cheerleader jump into the lane during a freethrow because she dropped a hair band into the lane while the opposing team was shooting! I readministered the free throw, coach went ballistic. I told him he was lucky I didn't tee him up for too many players on the court. Yeah, I know, a slight misapplication of the rules, but he told his cheerleading coach to get her girls the heck out of the way!

We don't even have cheerleaders here :p I've seen it in a game once! Once in a lifetime, and never reffed a game with 'em, so I never have had to dodge fliping people, rather people walking around on court shooting (in case there are no stands they simply walk on court between quarters and shoot)

And defence shouting, I've been doing it for years when I play, and I let teams do it too. As long as the bench remains seated and simply cheers the own team, let them cheer, no harm done. But a bench calling AIRBALL!!!!, I can't whack the bench, but I would T up the coach for sure

Voyager -- we don't allow that kind of language here! :D (this a joke -- flipping can mean someone doing somersaults, or it can be a euphemism for the F word. )

hm, rewrite, don't think so :p but thank's for the warning, I'll remember (erhm, or forget) it for future (non)use :p

Actually, as a pun, said with a certain annoyed tone in your voice, it would be a great way to demonstrate your familiarity with the English language.

Those flipping cheerleaders were doing flips during the flipping 3rd timeout in the last flipping 30 seconds! I almost flipped out.

Back to the original post. Nice to hear some excitement from the bench in a positive way. As for cheerleaders, most are out mainly to have the crowd look at them.

Let's play a game :p how old am I? and how long have I studied english :p
Nah, I won't let you answer lol
I'm 14 (15 in a month though)
I've been studying english for 4½ year. Still, would you guess right away that I havn't got english as my native language? It took you 110 posts (that was less then I was hoping for), and also, how many languages did you speak when you were 14? I speak 2 (Swedish and English) and I'm learning a 3rd (French), as I recall it, most brittish people (can't speak for you americans really though) never learn more then 2 languages, it's usuall to know 4 or even 5 in Sweden! So I think I can live with that mistake, and forksref's right, this thread has gone totaly weird :P (I'd write something with flipped if I were sure you couldn't misinterpret it :p)