Hello! Thank you for inquiring about the cheerleading program at Southern Oregon University. Tryouts are by invitation only, with a screening process that is designed to be easy and take very little of your time. Using a screening process to invite people to tryouts serves several purposes:
- It screens out those who do not have the appropriate skill level for college cheerleading (which helps make the actual tryout weekend more efficient for those who are prescreened and invited to tryouts)
- It screens out those who are ineligible due to poor grades or due to lack of dedication and/or commitment
- It saves unnecessary travel expenses to tryouts for someone who doesn’t have the appropriate skill level
- It saves an unnecessary tryout fee for someone who doesn’t have the appropriate skill level (for those who make it onto the team, the tryout fee is applied to the coming year’s expenses)
- It allows the coaching staff to get a look at the talent that will be invited to tryouts in order to gear an appropriate schedule for the tryout weekend.
For screening for eligibility, please see click here for the Eligibility Assessment form. Please fill out that form and return it to me by turning it in to my mailbox in the athletic office at SOU.
The skills assessment screening can easily be done by video or in person.
- Send a video you already have: If you already have a video of yourself or your team, it may be that all you need to do is send me a DVD or a link to the YouTube video or something like that. If it’s a video of your competition routine, it likely shows what your approximate skill level is, and that’s all we’re really looking for at this point. Be sure to let us know which one you are.
- You could create a video: We’d like to see three to five jumps, your best tumbling skills, a short chant or cheer, and a short dance of maybe six to eight 8-counts (30 seconds-ish). For the dance, it would be best to have you and at least one other person dancing so that we can see synchronization. If that’s not possible, perform the dance by yourself on the video, but please perform it twice so that I can compare consistency of movement. We would also like to see what you can do in a stunt group. We are looking for the ability to perform in a four-person stunt group (no front spots), doing a one-legged stunt (a liberty or higher level stunt) with a fulldown.
- If you can’t do one of these options, please contact me. I’m sure we can work something else out.
For those who are invited to come to tryouts, those tryouts will be held on April 27th, April 28th, and April 29th (Friday-Saturday-Sunday). We are concentrating efforts right now on the tryout packet and will make that available for those who pass the screening process.
Thank you,
Tina Siegl
Head Coach - SOU Cheer Team and SOU Dance Crew
541-890-5584
