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That’s a good question. That’s the question you or your daughter should ask the coach.</p>
<p>My daughter cheers and they do miss for away games and when they go to nationals. The whole team does not usually go to the away games though. My daughter lets her professors know if she is going to miss for cheer and she gets the notes from a friend. She did fine with that last year. She is in nursing so this year will most likely be her last year to be able to cheer.</p>
<p>If your D is not going to be offered the same institutional advantages and supports as the varsity athletes, most particularly priority registration for classes to avoid (to the greatest possible extent) scheduling conflicts with practice and travel to games, then she should think twice about pursuing this EC in college. Despite her activity’s association with athletics, unless she is offered the same accommodations as, say, the football players, the professors are just going to consider it another club, like skiing or ultimate frisbee, and they aren’t going to be really pleased about her missing class for it. Most professors accept varsity athletics as a fact of university life but aren’t willing to extend the same considerations to all student activities. It’s important for your D to investigate what is available to her and make no assumptions.</p>
<p>Just to follow up, D talked with the coach and they are actually leaving at 4:00 for this game this weekend so she won’t end up missing any classes. Apparantly the list when it came out listed the earliest time they could leave but they generally leave later. So for this weekend she is going and we hope it will work out this way for the other weeks. Most of the other games are not that far away so hopefully it will be a similar situation the other weeks. As far as your comment, NJSue, I agree about the institutional advantages and support. D also plays a club sport and the letter they gave them to take to their professors for the club sport was very general - just giving information about the away games but not asking for any special accomodations. For the Cheer squad it was much different and much more insistant on accomodations being given. But that is besides the point, as D doesn’t want to miss class unless it is absolutely necessary for something very important and she doesn’t feel getting to a game 24 hours in advance is important enough to miss class even if the professors are understanding about it. For her, the Cheer squad is not that big of a deal - just a fun thing to do - but definately not worth compromising her studies.</p>
<p>Did your D cheer in HS? HS athletes miss classes all the time for their sport and most student athletes have mastered the time management challenges of travel sports well before college.</p>
<p>No, she didn’t cheer in high school but did other sports. She is good with time management and has managed well when she did need to miss class. In high school however, if they missed a class it was generally at the end of the day for a meet that was occurring that evening. I can’t think of a single time they left the day before for an event except for maybe some rowing regattas that were in different states and started at 8 am on Saturday. Even then they left after class was over on Friday.</p>
<p>Her concern wasn’t so much with missing class, but rather why the need to miss class when the event was so far in the future. Aubs1126 explained well why the football team leaves early and in her case we were glad to find out the cheer team isn’t leaving as early as originally stated. I guess she will find out what they will do all day on Saturday when she spends the time this weekend.</p>