The Best Cheer Competition Gifts Your Squad Will Actually Use

End of competition season is when every coach and team parent hits the same wall: everyone wants to get the squad something, nobody wants it to be the same glittery bow every other team already handed out. Here's a shortlist that actually gets used.

For practice and travel

• A proper insulated water bottle — the kind that survives being thrown in a kit bag, not a flimsy one
• A mat bag big enough for shoes, pom-poms and a change of clothes
• Grip socks in the squad's actual colours, not just "whatever was in stock"

For the team as a whole

• A team photo, properly printed and framed, not just posted in a group chat and forgotten
• A squad playlist handed over as a surprise for the next competition's warm-up
• A shout-out board signed by every parent, for the athletes to keep

The one every single athlete can have, personalised

Here's the gift that scales from "one star athlete" to "entire 20-person squad" without the cost or the planning headache multiplying with it: a personalised medal slider, engraved with each athlete's own name and the competition they just cheered at. It threads straight onto the ribbon of whatever medal they already won — nothing extra to carry, nothing extra to lose.

From £9.99 each, and because it's engraved rather than printed, it won't fade or peel after one wash of the kit bag it inevitably ends up thrown in.