Building Good Cheer

Most gym owners start out doing every job. Coaching, the books, scheduling, and every parent email that lands at 10 p.m. The hard part is deciding which job to hand off first, and when the gym can afford it.

Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters, coached until year 26 and answered parent messages herself until her final year, when burnout forced the change. Her position is simple. You are a gym owner first and a coach second. Her first delegation was the books, on day one.

Also covered: the childhood best friend who became vice president and told Tara she could buy two new mats, not six. Keeping a year’s salary in reserve, and how that carried the gym through COVID. Opening a second location two hours from home, and why a nightly manager took years to find. The weekly level leader meeting that kept track of every athlete.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

An injury two teams ahead pushes a hall back fifteen minutes. The coaches are backstage with the team. The parents are in the stands with the old time. Nobody sends the update. Or a scratch moves the hall forward, and a parent who left another hall with two minutes to spare walks in to find the routine half over.

Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters, is joined by sisters True Hall, who coached beside her for about 30 years, and Taylor Novak, an original F5 athlete who now has two kids competing. Tara’s view is that coaches work behind the curtain, parents work the front of the house, and schedule changes get lost between them.

Also covered: why a hall running ten minutes behind does not mean warm-up is running behind; fifty parents lined up at the mat and told their team is six teams away; why parents who never competed take a schedule change harder; and Kevin’s walkthrough of CheerKeeper, the live schedule app he built for competition days.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

A competitive cheer season looks different from the floor than it does from the office. There is the first full-year practice that ends in tears in the car. There is the tryout where you decide whether to throw a skill you are not sure of. There is the coach you would work harder for, and the one you would not.

Kevin's daughter Abby spent her competitive years at Maryland Twisters and is now in college. She looks back on what stuck. Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters, which she grew to nearly 800 athletes, explains how she ran placements from the other side of the table: show what you can hit, prove you are true to level, and move up later.

Also covered: why a standing tuck alone does not put an athlete on a level four team, what an athlete wishes her parent understood after an hour-long drive home from practice, why kids on the top team and kids on level four were friends inside the gym, and how putting more than one coach on every team balanced out a harsher coaching style.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

A parent calls on a Tuesday night asking about teams. Someone at the desk takes a name and a number. What happens in the next few hours decides whether that family ends up in your gym or the one down the street.

Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters, grew the program from roughly 50 athletes to nearly 800. Her approach to filling a gym is old-fashioned on purpose. Call back the same day. Get the whole family in for a tour. Let them meet your staff and your athletes. Social media helps, but it does not replace follow-up.

Also covered: why she never used a script but made sure she knew how to sell against her own gym. The early-days house calls that helped put F5 on the map nationally. How a team started by one parent for athletes with special needs became part of what set the program apart. Why a standout at open gym with no name on file is a lost athlete.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

A family signs their kid up at six or seven. Somewhere in the back of their mind sits a thought they rarely say out loud. Maybe this ends in a college scholarship. Most of them never find out whether that hope is realistic until the athlete is a senior and the timeline has already closed.

Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters, grew the program from roughly 50 athletes to nearly 800 over about 28 years. Her read: the opportunity is real and far bigger than most parents know, the conversation belongs in ninth grade, and making a college roster is not the same thing as getting a program to pay for it.

Also covered: what Acro and Tumbling is and why those programs fund athletes differently than game day squads. Why college coaches do not want to hear from mom and dad. The mother whose top three schools all required fulls for a daughter who does not tumble. And why Tara ran the whole thing on a blanket email to senior-team parents instead of a formal program.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

Seventy percent of kids quit organized sports by thirteen. Most owners hear that number and think about burnout. Tara Rall's experience is that the reason is usually smaller and more fixable than that, and that nobody asked the kid.

Tara founded Maryland Twisters in 1998 and grew it to nearly 800 athletes over roughly 28 years before selling in May 2026. Her position: before a family pulls a child, there should be one honest conversation with the coach, the athlete, and one parent, set up so the kid does not feel like they are in trouble. Most of what comes out of that conversation turns out to be solvable.

Also covered: the athlete who will never get the skill and why that does not have to end anything, why putting a two-week deadline on a skill almost never works, how to make a schedule that fits two sports instead of forcing a choice, and why a half-year prep program keeps kids who would otherwise leave for good.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

Every gym has one now. The parent-run Instagram account for a seven or eight year old athlete, filled with tumbling clips and stunt duos and backyard skills.

Tara Rall spent nearly three decades building Maryland Twisters from about 50 athletes to nearly 800, and she watched this shift happen in real time. In this episode she talks through what changed, where the line sits between proud parent and manager, and why the question is not whether the content is good but what the account is actually for.

Also covered: why gym owners get hate mail over who appears in a highlight reel, why athletes rarely notice until an adult points it out, what to tell a family that offers to sponsor another kid, and the guidelines every program should give its social media manager before anything goes out with your logo on it.

Building Good Cheer is a show about the business of youth sports, hosted by Kevin Pedini with Tara Rall, founder and longtime owner of Maryland Twisters.

Tara Rall spent close to three decades running team placements at Maryland Twisters, at one point sorting roughly 400 athletes into teams through a process that took weeks rather than a day.

In this episode she covers what coaches are actually evaluating, how returning athletes get weighed against new arrivals, why her gym stopped calling it a tryout, and what she wishes parents understood before they send that email. She also opens up the operations side: report cards sent to families two to three times a year, folders on every athlete that eventually became spreadsheets, and the callback day fallout that taught her to let the dust settle before responding to anyone.

For gym owners, club directors and studio owners, this is the process conversation. For parents, it is a look at the other side of the table.

Building Good Cheer is a podcast about the business of youth sports and what it really takes to build a program that lasts. Hosted by Kevin Pedini & Tara Rall.

onsidehero.com/podcast

Coach turnover is the problem every youth sports program shares. Tara Rall kept coaches for 10, 20, even 30 years at Maryland Twisters, and in this episode she explains how: recruiting by complimenting the competition, hiring homegrown athletes who bleed the brand's colors, shadow days that reveal who can actually coach, creative compensation for an hourly staff, and the check-in habit that mattered more than any raise. Plus direct advice for coaches on how to ask for more money the right way. Hosted by Tara Rall & Kevin Pedini.

Tara Rall spent 28 years building Maryland Twisters from a rec-field coaching favor into one of the most recognized competitive cheer programs in the country, growing it from roughly 50 athletes to more than 600 before selling the gym in 2026. In the first episode of Building Good Cheer, she breaks down the phrase that shaped how she ran all of it: repetition leads to retention.

Kevin Pedini and Tara dig into where the phrase came from, a marketing-minded parent back in 2007, and what consistency actually looks like inside a program. They cover the accidental founding of Maryland Twisters, why culture came before a formal mission statement, what a real week looks like for an owner doing everything alone, the first place consistency breaks down when the season gets busy, and why the finances are the one thing an owner should never fully hand off.

This week's takeaway you can use right now: run a summer temperature check. Have each coach send one positive, specific check-in to every family before school starts. Athletes and parents who feel seen in August are the ones still on your roster in October.

In this episode:
How a rec-field favor turned into founding Maryland Twisters
The 2007 conversation that changed how Tara saw her business
Consistency as a leadership habit, not a marketing tactic
Culture first, formal mission later
A gym owner's real weekly schedule
Where consistency breaks first: budgets, books, and who touches the money
The F5 sleepover tradition and what rituals do for retention
One thing to streamline this month

Building Good Cheer is a weekly show about the business of youth sports for gym owners, studio owners, and program directors. New episodes every week wherever you listen or watch.

Hosted by Kevin Pedini and Tara Rall.