If you're going to quit, you should do so now and not wait until after homecoming. If you quit now, there would still be time for the coach to put another girl on the team in your place, and that girl would have the benefit of starting at the beginning of the year, and your team will be able to work her into formations and stunt groups. If you quit after homecoming, it will probably be too late to replace you. And that's not really fair to the girl who *could* have replaced you... or who would have made the team in the first place if you hadn't tried out. I feel that waiting until after homecoming would be pretty selfish. If you decide to stay until homecoming, you might as well stick it out for the rest of the year.
As for cheering in college... definitely take some tumbling classes. You don't necessarily have to take gymnastics (which includes vault, bars and beam as well as floor), although working on those apparatus will help with your overall strength and balance, which will in turn make you a better flyer and tumbler. But the main thing you need to focus on is tumbling: standing back handsprings, standing back tucks, and running tumbling passes: roundoff, back handsprings, back tucks and layouts. You should also take some stunting lessons, for sure, as you will be required to fly on a coed team and you'll need to either base or fly on an all-girl team.
One thing to consider: some colleges do take your previous cheer experience into consideration during the tryout process. For instance, one girl I know was a super talented all-star cheerleader, with better skills than most of her competition when she tried out for a college team. However, she did not make the team because her coach wanted girls who had experience in school/sideline cheering, since that's what they would mostly be doing and because it shows that they can be dedicated to supporting their school. She did make the team at another school, but my point is, some colleges do prefer girls who have cheered on their high school teams.
i would say you should quit cheerleading and do gymnastics. the more gymnastics the training the better alot of your cheer skills will be. also you said your school cheerleading team is very good well when you go to college there will be a lot of people who were on good cheerleading teams and will surpass you in skill. so i think gymnastics would be good so you can work on your technique and skill. And i think you should wait until the end of season because it is sort of rude otherwise. while your waiting until september maybe do a trial class for gymnastics to see if you like it!
Most D1/D2 colleges require their cheerleaders to have the same skillset as a level 6 gymnast. So it would definitely help. However if you think high school cheerleading is too time consuming, you're not going to be doing college cheering, it's even more time consuming.
I'm a cheerleader and I was thinking te same thing.. But instead of quitting I enrolled in a tumbling class that meets once a week and it help a lot!!
