River Dell’s 10th grade English teacher, Ms. Schiff, took over RDHS Cheerleading after previous varsity coach Maureen Kiel retired after a successful 41 years at River Dell.
Although the cheerleaders may miss her, they are excited about Coach Schiff stepping into the role of coach. Coach Schiff has many new ideas to come, and the team admires her work ethic and dedication to the improvement of the team and their routines.
“She is an extremely direct, hardworking, and caring person to be around and to have as a coach/teacher,” explained Sabrina Schneider and Natalie Spitzer, the varsity captains. “She likes to try new skills and work on things that everyone can adapt to quickly,” they also said.
Ms. Schiff cheered from third to eighth grade in the New Milford junior program and then coached the Knight’s Jr. Cheerleaders all throughout her high school years. Following that, she also cheered in high school.
When the time came, she then coached the JV team at Mahwah High School shortly before coming to River Dell.
Along with Coach Schiff, we have incoming coaches Cheyenne Mullen and Kellie Lynch, previous River Dell cheerleaders. Schiff exclaimed, “It has been a dream come true. I always knew when it was my time to take over the program that I wanted to do it with both of them by my side and I was thrilled when they both agree to come back.”
“River Dell’s new JV coaches are so creative and knowledgeable, and they are always willing to jump in and offer assistance to everyone,” said Schiff.
“Coaching the JV team has been a lot of fun, and it brings back many memories from our high school years,” said Coach Mullen and Lynch. “It is exciting to watch JV and varsity get better as the season progresses.”
Another thing they are extremely excited for, is competition season, because they were doing that at one point, so it makes it a full circle moment for them.
Mullen shared, “She is great, and it is easy with her. She is easy to work with, she has a lot of clever ideas, and we all work well as a team because we all bring in new fresh ideas. She appreciates that, and she is a good leader of the team overall. It is also so much fun to learn new things from her.”
Coach Schiff announced, “Coaching has been a lot of fun, and has been a lot of work, but it has been great to watch the progress that everyone has made.” Her favorite thing about coaching is watching how far everyone has come throughout the months, from July-September.
“Watching the team go from cheer camp to now, everyone has improved in terms of skills, team-bonding, captains have taken nice leadership with helping out the team, and the younger girls are showing improvements and looking up to the older ones,” Schiff stated.
She has many strengths and brings a lot to this team. According to Sabrina and Natalie, “Schiff brings so much positivity, ideas, and technique to the team and always want everyone to get along. She is also very efficient all the time which only makes the team better from where we are now.”
