Football Chants

How to Get the Crowd Involved In Doing Football Chants

There are a few key ingredients to rousing the crowd to chant their favorite team on to victory. Try these tips to get the crowd excited and participating in your football chants:

• Chants have to be easy. They should follow a rhythm, be repetitive and be simple to hear with easy words.

• Prep your crowd for some football chants at the game by teaching them before hand. Pep rallies are good times to do this, but you could also print the words on handouts that give directions to the games.

• Use props. Megaphones and signage can help a lot in clearly communicating your message!

• Use a two person stunt. While chants generally do not involve complicated stunts, putting a cheerleading in a one story high pyramid to hold up signs, using the megaphone or just chanting the words helps your football chants to be heard more clearly in a large stadium.

• Pick a few football chants and do them all the time. If you repeat the same fun football chants at each game, you'll have a stadium full of loud fans that can be heard everywhere!

Tips for Planning for the Big Game

One of the most important jobs of a cheerleader is to understand what is happening on the field and respond appropriately in a cheer. It is very helpful if the cheerleading captains plan for the football game and even practice for it before hand. Here are a few tips so that your cheers and chants come off flawlessly:

• Step 1: Prepare your half-time routine. If this is a home game, you'll need to make sure your half-time routine is stellar. Work with your band and others who are generally involved in setting up for half-time.

• Step 2: Choose your cheers that have motions. Football has lots of down times for the crowd like when the team takes a time out for example. This is a great time to give one of your cheers that uses motions. Make sure that you practice enough cheers so that you don't have to repeat anything during the game.

• Step 3: Choose your chants and practice them. You're going to want to choose a few chants for defense, for offensive plays and for touchdowns. Chants are generally accompanied by clapping and stomping, but some squads are known to do a little kick step just to add some fun and variety to what they're doing. The rule of thumb for movement during a chant is to keep it simple so that a fan can do it in the stands.

Once you've practiced and everyone has a clear idea of what's going on during the game, it should be easy to dazzle the crowd with your school spirit!

Examples of Football Chants

Here are a few chants to use at football games:

• V-I-C-T-O-R-Y--That's how we do the warrior cry. (Repeat three times, and then you can give a warrior cry.)
  

• Touchdown, touchdown, give us a touchdown! C'mon blue and white (insert your school colors) we want a touchdown!
  

• D-E-F-E-N-S-E, take that ball away for a victory.
  

• Go Home. Pack Up. We're goona make you give that football up.
  

• (Stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp) Faster, faster to the end!
  

• End zone, end zone here we come! Goin' to the end zone 'cuz we're number one! (To use when a player makes a fast break with lots of yards to make it to the end zone.)

Tips for Making Up Your Own Chants

If you want something really original, consider these pointers for making up your own chants:

• Make a list of things that are commonly associated with football: touchdowns, the end zone, football, defense, offense, etc. Brainstorming things that go with football will help inspire you to come up with different chants. Sometimes even chanting something simple like "touchdown" can get the crowd riled up.

• If you want to make a rhyme, it's often easier to spell out the first word and find something that rhymes with the last letter.

• Make sure you have a good repertoire of chants to get through an entire football game!

Chants, Chants, Chants!

Repeating certain chants during a football game can help keep the crowd excited and also will help get back to the heart of cheerleading- spectator participation. Plan out your chants and cheers ahead of the big game and consider teaching some ahead of time by doing them at a pep rally or printing the words on a flyer that announces the game details. Most of all, remember that your goal as the cheerleader is to inspire the crowd to root for their favorite team whether they win or lose!