Senior Project Update.

MENTORSHIP
I have been looking into the way my coaches have been coaching and seeing the different ways to deal with athletes. I missed about three weeks of practice due to illness and various other things that took precedence. However, I was with the team before and on their first competition day November 17th. I was with the girls and two boys who are knew for the whole day. The competition lasted 8 hours. When it was time to warm up Anthony(teammate and fellow coach) took the team to go stretch and warm up before going on stage. The athletes were really nervous so we had numerous huddles with them to calm them down and pep them up. It was exciting to be a coach waiting for my team to go out there and leave everything on the mat. They got third place which the coaching staff knew would happen since we didn't push them to learn harder skills. After that day we decided they were ready for harder stunts and tougher handling.

INDEPENDENT COMPONENT

After talking with one of my mentors, I have found out that the number of hours required before you can apply for USASF certification is well over 250 and I won't be able to complete that during this year. I will continue my mentorship which will help me work towards it and do whatever I can to get closer to being certified like first aid certification and possibly going through other companies to get certified to coach a highschool team by chance.

SCIENCE FAIR

I am going to begin conducting my experiment soon to start retrieving data and begin writing out my lab report. I will receive the Vernier force plate and all requirements from Pittman this week.

Science Fair Proposal

1. All-Star Cheerleading

2. Most athletes do not demonstrate proper technique or strength, usually resulting in injury.
"Some days in tumbling, we do not even do the skill they are working on. For instance, a back handspring requires strength in plyometrics, core, shoulders, hamstrings, and glutes, and the athlete also must know how to engage her head, core, and power bases. I have seen many people spend thousands of dollars on a back handspring when all they needed to do was strengthen their body appropriately and the skill would have been easy.
Athletes must follow progressions from A to Z to learn well and completely. Plus, it will keep them injury-free and psychologically relaxed. Conditioning is extremely important, so do not neglect it."
Love, Debbie. "Help! I'm A Cheer Parent!" Fortheloveoftumbling.com. N.p., 4 July 2010. Web. <http://fortheloveoftumbling.com/2010/07/help-i%E2%80%99m-a-cheer-parent/#>.

3. My Hypothesis:
If a spring floor is used, a cheerleader falling from 10 ft would not break their bones, contrary to on other surfaces.

4. I plan on testing the critical heights of surfaces used by cheerleaders in order to find the potential of bone breakage that would occur at or above those critical heights. I plan to use the vernier force plate to measure the force exerted by the collision of a weight and the surface I'm testing. I will take into account the height at which the weight is dropped, the velocity of the object before it hits the surface, the work done on the object, and the impulse, deformity or energy lost in the resulting impact. The tools I will use will be a meter stick for height, scale for weight, equations to find work done and impulse.By finding this data I can compare it to data found in different studies that give numbers for the force required to break bone and critical heights of certain surfaces.

5. Select one of the following Project Categories for your experiment:
Pharmacology
Physics

Blog 9

(1) What is the best way to prevent injury in an All-Star Cheerleading team?
(2) I am not going to revise my EQ at this time
(3) Possible answers are stretching, strengthening, proper technique, safe environment, and certified coaches with experience.