Creativity is Leadership

Derek A. Ramel

SuperCDA Founder & Executive Director

Cheerleading Historian & Mentor

Greetings ALL! This blog has finally come to fruition after many years being encouraged to do so. What a great way to share as much as I can in a focused environment for interested enthusiasts to reference!

This comes off the Coaches’ Conference at Oak Forest H.S. on Oct 1st, where I was able to share Creativity by going through my career and pulling inspirations to get everyone’s juices flowing. With championship successes from 1983-2023, my timeline actually stretches back to 1970 as a tag-along mascot when I was 4 years old. It has truly been a lifetime in cheerleading!

One point I strongly urged was that Creativity should come from the soul and should be an expression of you, your team and for the audience. The natural reaction from an onlooker is the reward well above any critique.

In the 50 minutes I had to share, speaking as fast as I could and throwing out as much info as possible, the time was filled with so many root inspirations and creative concepts. ‘70s-era stunts, visual floor movements and old-school preps for jumps… all that can now be used as unique splashes today.

It was also great to incorporate history to educate how things came to be and get a greater understanding of what has become standard and what was left behind (but also remain as inspirations for today).

For the next conference, maybe I can offer Marathon Creativity considering we only tapped a fraction of my career span. Coaches could come in and out of several sessions to capture however much they’d like.

A mentor of mine once said that her philosophy for cheerleading is to “be creative — do what you can do. This is leadership.”

Creativity IS leadership….

Creativity outlasts any scoring opinion. Fulfill the needs, obligatory elements — then take everyone on a journey that YOU lead.