Dan Cotton
Interviewed by Jesse Chavez
Hi Dan! Thank you for taking your time to do this interview, the last time we spoke was at the TSN West Coast Coaches Conference. At that conference I actually had the opportunity to take your classes and I was able to appreciate your approach to drills and general building.
You also own a gym and have cheered at the school level, where have programs gone wrong when trying to build up their talent?
I have been blessed to be a part of both the sport of Gymnastics and Cheerleading. I have been involved with cheer at both the high school, collegiate, and all star levels. Some of the biggest mistakes I see programs make, in both the scholastic and All Star sides; is how everyone focuses on having the skill rather than the conditioning, flexibility and mastery of the mechanics of the skill. What I mean by this is that often times teams will say, you need a back handspring so throw a back handspring. Vs focusing on the strength, flexibility, and shaping that go into the skill. As a gymnast roughly 1/3 of my time was spent conditioning and doing drills. This built strength, awareness and control. The challenge most cheer programs have is we don’t get to practice 5 hours per day, 5 days a week. So at some point something has to give.
The second mistake, is focusing on recruiting talent vs. building talent. This is more common in the all star realm of cheer but happens on the scholastic side as well. Programs that are focused on getting all of the good athletes to come to them will struggle to have lasting success. When you recruit talent you’re expected to win. Once you are not able to win, all of those athletes will not be coming to be a part of your program anymore.
Focus internally. Your Freshman and JV athletes are your future. So put some of your best coaches on those teams and start building from the ground up.
The third biggest mistake is leveling incorrectly. I have very particular opinions on this matter and my view is not what is right for everyone but it has made a big difference for our Allstar program. In competitive/school cheer you can accomplish 3 things. 1. Have Fun. 2. Be competitively successful. 3. Compete outside your level of mastered skills. However you cannot achieve more than 2 at the same time. You can have fun and be competitively successful, but you will not be competing skills you haven’t mastered. You can be successful and compete outside your mastery, but you will not have fun. Your coach will have to drive you into the ground to get you to a level where you can compete.
You can have fun and compete outside your mastery, but you will likely not be competitively successful. So leveling your teams with Having fun and being competitively successful in mind will help progress your athlete long term. The same can be applied to high school cheerleading.
What have some programs done right when building their talent?
First and foremost, establish a “way” within your program. This doesn’t have to be written in stone and may evolve but have a “way” you jump, a way you set for stunts, a way you grip as a main, secondary and back spot. Creating a way will create an understanding across your program of what the expectation is when performing a skill.
Secondarily is to focus on the things I mentioned people not doing previously. Ensure you are building athletes understanding, mastery, strength and flexibility to perform skills before expecting them to perform them in the context of a routine. Simply throwing a skill does not mean an athlete can execute a skill successfully in the context of a routine. So level your athletes correctly where they can progress and not build mental blocks because they are being demanded to perform skills they cannot do when they are fatigued and under pressure.
At the conference I heard you talk about all of the different ways stunts can be taught. As a gym owner/coach who has an extensive resume behind them, what have you done to keep an open mind when adapting to a newer grip or way of teaching a stunt? How was your first experience and how did you overcome that “it needs to be done this way” mentality?
So I think I am pretty open minded about these things. I am always open to learning new techniques, new grips and better ways to do what has always been done. I think for me the shift was early in my coaching career.
While I was coaching and cheering in college I was very particular about things being done the “right way”. I remember encountering this when coaching a Coed level 5 team the first year level 5 was a thing. I was DEAD SET on my boys doing true toss stunts. I was a coed cheerleader who had just won USA nationals. My boys were going to toss there stunts. Then I saw a video of someone doing an assisted toss full up where the spotter toe pitched. I was immediately struck by how visual it was, ensured my boys hit at the top and it was a “more difficult” stunt. The other ah ha moment for me would be fullups.
I still believe in training traditional fullup grips from a progression standpoint. However, when I saw the ruby slipper grip for a 540 I was mind blown. That really opened my eyes as a coach to always being open to “better” ways of performing stunts.
“I could potentially lose athletes if I’m too strict with them” what is your opinion on that sentiment in regards to building your program?
There is a balance to this. I would argue that you are also going to lose athletes if you are not strict with them. Kids crave discipline.
Kids, and people in general want to be in an environment with high standards. Where hard work is rewarded and consequences are fair. I believe the balance should be that we remember these are kids. They need discipline and they need structure but they also need support, empathy and understanding. This is the hard balance for a coach to strike. I make sure my athletes know that I love them as a person but that does not change what my level of expectation is going to be for them on the mat. Strict programs are also more likely to be competitively successful because high standards yield high results.
I am what some would consider a fairly tough coach. Year over year my toughest team has 40+ people trying out for a maximum of 30 spots.
Lastly, what is your opinion on school cheer camps and what are your recommendations? As you know there are a lot of options to choose from. From large conglomerate brand camps, smaller companies and allstar gyms that offer camps.
I have to admit that I am biased on this subject as I run a camp company, Dream Camps.
I created that company because I had experienced camps at multiple levels from both the attendee, coach, and staff member perspectives. As a cheerleader I attended USA camps during the summer, they were fun, I remember learning lots of material we never used and spending time with my team. I worked for NCA when I was in college and had a blast doing it, but I did not like the canned way we did awards and how often teams had to do evaluations. For instance, it was a standing rule that every team got a spirit stick and every team got a superior ribbon by the end of camp. Even if they didn’t really deserve it.
I later attended NCA camp with the high school I coached and HATED IT. The stunt rotations were canned and not what we needed to work on. The breaks that staff got had to be spent working on routines for that nights evaluation. We spent hours learning cheers and chants that we would never perform at our school. It just seemed like a waste. Additionally there was no tumbling or real teaching. Doing a camp at an all star gym can be great. You get invested coaches, equipment and quality training as well as a more customized schedule for your team.
The draw back is it is harder to recreate the experience of a “luxury away” camp. Dream Camps was founded with the goal of providing an away camp experience with top tier instructors and a reasonable price. We build out a full cheer gym with 2 full cheer floors, tumble track, rod floor and foam mats for stunting. We provide customized schedules to accommodate scholastic teams as well as all-star teams, and bring in some of the best instructors from around the country to train the athletes that attend camp. So I biasedly think we provide the best camp experience in the United States.
If you are a school program and looking for a lot more skill progression I would book with a company like Dream Camps or a local Allstar gym that caters to your programs needs.
If you are looking for an overnight experience and material then I would encourage you to go to a large companies university style camp. I really enjoy the more customized camps because it allows programs to build technique and skill while staying at their own desired pace.