For a sport that requires almost no equipment, cheerleading can be incredibly expensive, especially in terms of a high school sport. When I attended my state’s cheer coaches’ conference, I was flabbergasted by the amounts that other coaches were saying their athletes had to spend. For one team, it was $600 for the sideline-only girls, THEN an additional $1200 for those on the competition team. A school down nearby ours (similar size and socioeconomic status) costs over $1000 per cheerleader.
Coming from a small, rural community, those types of expenses are simply not feasible for my team. In today’s world where the cost of living continues to rise, many families are doing their best to make ends meet, let alone have leftover funds for extra curriculars. I have a feeling this will continue to become more of a challenge in the coming years.
I am a firm believer that it is possible to get your kids quality items that last and to do so at an affordable price. In this post, I am going to break down for you exactly how I do it. To reiterate, this post is solely focused on the expenses that each athlete is personally responsible for. We’ll cover team expenses another day!
This season, the cost for new members of my team is $325, which gets them 15 pieces of gear AND 3 days of camp.
Returners can spend even less if they have kept their basics in good shape, which many do. We also do a personal fundraiser at the beginning of the season, through which many of my kids have been able to cover all of their expenses (with some funds leftover to pay for tumbling lessons)!
How do I keep my expenses at less than half what other schools in my state are spending? Below are my top tips and my thought process for finding deals and saving money.
1 | Use the same basics year after year
My girls get three crops/bodyliners, two pairs of spanks, 3 hair bows, a set of poms, and a pair of shoes that have been the same since I began coaching and will stay the same as long as I am here. These items are an investment in their first year, but as long as they take care of them, they can use them for multiple years, sometimes even all four! This is at least $160 right off the top that can be saved from one year to the next.
2 | Standardize items throughout all levels of your program
When your lower levels have the same items as your high school team, this extends how many years they can get out of an item. It also makes it easier for parents to replace something mid-year if needed. When the shoes from 7th grade wear out right before 8th grade basketball season, it is easier to stomach buying a new pair mid-year, because parents know they will be able to keep the same pair going into their freshman year. Our junior high girls get one of the crops, one of the spanks, and the same bows, shoes, and poms as high school, which allows them to save some money coming into 9th grade.
3 | Use your local t-shirt shop or DIY it
The big cheer gear company charges $27 for a basic tee with 2-color screen print…$45 for a tee with a glitter vinyl transfer. *insert eye roll* Going through my local t-shirt guy, it costs us $13 per screen printed tee. If you or a team parent have a Cricut, you can also design and make your own shirts from scratch using heat-transfer vinyl. I made 50 t-shirts for our youth camp for right about $5 per shirt. Granted, that doesn’t account for the time spent, but $5 vs $45 makes the time well worth it in my eyes.
4 | Shop around for your items
Speaking of the big cheer gear company, I know they make it easy to be a one-stop shop, but that doesn’t mean they are the best option for everything. It takes a little extra work to get items from 3-5 different companies, but again, the little bit of time and extra paperwork it requires on my end is worth the amount that we save.
5 | Really take time to think through what you are requiring your team to buy and why. Is all of it truly necessary?
How many full sets of practice wear do they truly need? Does everything need to be customized with their name? Is it really that important to have matching backpacks? Does it make more sense for the cheer fund to buy and keep warmups like any other uniform? If your girls are required to buy their own uniform, why? Would it make more sense to do a team fundraiser to buy uniforms for the program to keep? Are the fancy bows really worth the extra $25-$50? For my team, the fancy team backpacks are an incentive they can only earn by attending their summer strength sessions. Warmups are treated like a uniform that we purchase using the cheer fund and will keep for 5+ years.
6 | Trends change fast, so stick to timeless basics
When it comes to practicewear sets, there is a new trend every year. One year it’s soffe shorts, then running-style shorts, then an a-line skort, then the super high-waisted boxing shorts, then flutter shorts, then a pleated skort, and next year it will be something different. Rather than buying a full new set of practice clothes each year, pick a couple basic bottoms and have those become a staple in your program. You can also give your team the freedom to pick their own shorts/skort in your school colors. This gives them the flexibility to find something in their budget that is comfortable for them, and they will still look cohesive, though not 100% uniform.
7 | Related to the last point, stick to school colors for your shorts/skorts
While it may be fun to get practicewear bottoms in a fun color, like pink or neon green leopard print, it really limits how often your cheerleaders can wear them. Instead, I would recommend sticking to practicewear bottoms in your school colors. Most likely, one of those colors is white or black, which you can then easily pair with a fun color top when you want to get creative.
8 | Think hard about camp and what you want to get out of your camp experience
I attended multiple sleep away camps as an athlete and multiple home camps as both an athlete and coach, and never felt that these camps with one of the big companies were worth the money or time spent. After trying a few different camp providers and several years with no camp at all, I reached out to one of our local university teams. They were more than willing to come work with us, and it ended up being my best camp experience to date!
Their coach completely customized 2 full days of instruction for us, teaching us new chants, a band dance, helping us clean some material we already had, and working on the stunts and pyramids that were next in our progressions. It was so great because we were able to get truly personalized instruction exactly at the level we needed. We started each day with a game and breakfast before our instructors arrived, and stayed later after they left for team dinner and another activity (all our meals were pitch-ins), which made it feel like camp rather than just another practice. After our 2 days with our college friends, we then spent a third day just as a team working hard on goal setting, team building, and technique details that we don’t typically get to spend a lot of time on. We paid just $90/athlete for 2 days.
Now, let's crunch the actual numbers!
Now that you have an idea of how I came up with this system, let’s take an in depth look at these expenses. The table below is a direct comparison of my teams’ actual costs for this year, compared to what they would be if we purchased from the big company. Asterisks (*) mark the items that are the same from year to year and only need to be repurchased if/when they are outgrown or worn out. In this table I will also note what company I get our items from. I am not affiliated with any of these companies (besides Amazon), I just use them every year and believe in the quality of these products.
While it is fun to get all new gear every year, we should be realistic about how those costs add up for our athletes and their families. I hope this has sparked some ideas for ways that you can manage expenses for your athletes. By keeping your core items consistent each year and shopping around, it is definitely possible to outfit your team well without breaking the bank.
