INTERVIEWR NAME: Christabel Spaulding
CONTACT INFO: Chrisspaulding2010@yahoo.com, (718) 525-2499
METHOD OF INTERVIEW: Phone interview
1. (Background) Tell me how you got started in this field of coaching. What was your education? What
educational background or related experience might be helpful in entering this coaching field? I Started
out as a team mom for my sons football team. He was 9 years old then and he is 65 now . I spent 40
something years with rifles. couple mothers started the Springfield riflletes. Physical education is a big
plus but you have to actually love the sport and actually like teaching. Some coaches Did high school
cheerleading in high school or college.
2. (Work Environment) What are the daily duties of your job? What skills/abilities are utilized in this
work? Girls come in and first warmup through a series of extensive stretching routines. Stretching is
extremely important so they do that for about half hour. Learn and practice Cheer routines after
stretching. Ability to organize people is really important I now have a the help of 27 year old volunteer
help me with that.
3. (Problems) What are the toughest problems you deal with? What problems does the
team/organization as a whole have? What is being done to solve these problems? A lot of other
programs have problem recruiting. Fundraising is also a huge issue. Busses, uniforms, cheer camp, cheer
events, and travel are all expenses we must consider each year. For example, it cost $350 per camper for
camp. Raffles are held for registration fee for parents that can’t afford. Penny drives. I Try my best to
make finances as convenient for the parents as possible.
4. (Life Style) What obligation does your work put on you outside the work week? How much flexibility
do you have in terms of work hours, vacations? Currently I am retired but I did work for over 30 years
while coaching the team. I juggled work and team simply by being organized and setting time aside for
raffles. I am also the president of whole rifles organization so I had other obligations, including football.
5. (Rewards) What do you find most rewarding about this work? seeing girls graduate from high cool
and college and being on a cheer squad. A lot of them get grabbed up by college teams and high school
team. I don’t know one girl that tried out that didn’t make it.
6. (Potential) Where do you see yourself going in a few years? What are your long term goals? What are
the short and long term goals of this team? My Goals as a team is to continue and to complete the 50th
anniversary in 2017 strong . Servicing boys and girls non-profit no one gets paid. One of my biggest goals
is for good people to take over my place after I am gone.
7. (The Industry) What trends do you see for this industry in the next 3 to 5 years? What kind of future
do you see for this team/organization? Couldn’t really answer. I see the industry being recognized as an
official sport before the eyes of the public.
8. (Typical Day) What does a typical day look like for you? What does a typical practice look like? I
already answered this question
9. (Recruitment) How do you recruit? What are tryouts like? How many individuals attend tryouts?
We Recruit mostly by word of mouth but we also do flyers banners, Facebook, poster. We don’t have
tryouts instead we train the girls.
What are qualities do you find the successful cheerleaders have? very coachable, ambition and skills.
Some are born to do it
10. (Advice) How well-suited is my background for this field? When the time comes, how would I go
about finding a job in this field? What experience, paid or volunteer, would you recommend? What
suggestions do you have to help make my resume more effective? I see that you have experience with
the young so that is certainly a plus, but you don’t really have experience in cheerleading so I think that
will be a major negative for you. I would recommend you volunteer with us this summer !! To make your
resume more effective I would so it is important to adjust your resume based off the position you are
applying to.
11. YOUR CHOICE QUESTION What is your greatest achievement as a coach? I host an Award
ceremony every year, it’s called the President’s award. I Let all participates know how to achieve
goals of receiving the award. An example is that as a team member, you have to be prepared for all
practice. I also have MVP awards based on leadership and doing roles past assigned ie running
practice when coach comes late
12. YOUR CHOICE QUESTION Where do you see cheerleading in 10 years? Like I said earlier I see it
being more respected in the eyes of the public
13. YOUR CHOICE QUESTION what can be done to make cheerleading become a recognized sport?
Teams have to keep going on. Keep active in different events
14. YOUR CHOICE QUESTION Do you have any male cheerleaders that are on the squad? Have had
some in the past. Ones that wanted to be on the squad were ready. They generally don’t care what
the football players say about them.
15. YOUR CHOICE QUESTION What is your biggest motivator? I would say my mother was my biggest
motivator, she used to push all the time to get involved in the community.
Fagbenle, Ayodeji
MFC205
4/10/16
Reflection Paper
Throughout this semester I learned many different things about the Sport of cheerleading,
from its inception to where it is heading now. I now have a much more clearer perspective of
cheerleading and understand the level of commitment it takes to for a cheerleading organization to be
successful. With Ms. Spaulding’s bright personality I, she was able to successfully shed some light on the
level of commitment that is required to be a coach nowadays. Something new that I learned is that it
takes a lot of money to run a cheerleading organization.
One of the things I found most interesting about my interview with Ms. Spaulding was that
she has been a cheerleading coach for over 40 years and that she hasn’t been paid a dime since then. It
is well known fact that most female sports are underfunded, especially cheerleading. I found it
commendable of her to find different ways of finding funds to push the program forward. The most
surprising found it interesting that she said in all her 40 years coaching all her cheerleaders who tried
out for any other outside cheerleading org made it in. This goes to show that she has a great program
that prepares her cheerleaders with at least the basics to make it on to any team.
I felt that overall the interview went well. The interview lasted about 40 minutes.
During that brief span of time I learned a lot about what it takes to not only coach a team as a fulltime
mom with a career but also run a whole sports organization. I was not nervous will talking to her mostly
because I have interviewed people in the past and Ms. Spaulding was a good conversationalist.