What Does A Cheerleading Draft Mean?

While members of professional sports teams sometimes are recruited through open tryouts, such players account for a small minority of all professional athletes. Instead, most athletes are selected through drafts, which involve teams at a higher level of competition claiming the playing rights to certain players at lower levels. Although such drafts do not exist for the cheerleading squads of professional sports teams, the selection process used by some teams is referred to as a draft.

Miami Dolphins

Similar to other NFL teams, the Miami Dolphins select new cheerleaders by holding auditions. While many more women try out than reach the auditions stage, even fewer are selected for the team's cheer squad. Due to the high level of competition among the women auditioning for the squad, the Miami Dolphins are one of the only professional sports teams that refers to their cheerleader selection process as a draft.

Youth Cheerleading Squads

To mimic the feel of higher levels of competition, many youth teams and cheerleading squads use a drafting system to distribute cheerleaders among teams. As such drafts are used for new cheerleaders only, both senior cheerleaders and parents play a role in organizing the draft. Although this process does not exclude cheerleaders the way professional sports drafts exclude minor league players, the selection-style draft process of professional sports is retained.

High School and College

Similar to the system used to select cheerleaders at the professional level, high school and college cheerleaders typically are chosen through open tryouts. Although these are generally regarded as open tryouts similar to the Miami Dolphins cheerleader draft, eligibility often is limited by past experience and athletic ability. While they are not chosen through drafts, cheerleaders at these levels often have extensive experience at lower levels.

Trying Out

Cheerleading is a physically and mentally demanding sport requiring strength, balance, poise, agility, focus, performance skills and flexibility. In addition to the sheer physicality of cheerleading, many of the stunts and maneuvers performed at the top levels involve a high degree of risk. As such, you should not approach the sport of cheerleading lightly. Regardless of whether you have previous experiences in sports, cheerleading, dance or gymnastics, you should be prepared to perform a variety of skills at a tryout. These skills typically include a dance and cheer routine, limited tumbling, a run out and a display of flexibility, such as a toe touch. Although you might perform well enough to pass the initial tryouts, you might have to go through further, potentially more demanding and competitive tryouts before making a squad.