Where have all the cheerleaders gone?

In our high school, as in many others, cheerleading has been phased out. Seems many kids lost interest in cheering for others when they had their own sports to compete in. And I totally get that. In my high school days (many eons ago, when Title 9 was still a toddler) I, too, opted for sports vs. cheerleading.

I know, I know – cheerleading IS a sport unto itself in many schools. But at our school it went the way of the dinosaur.

I’d like to make a plea to bring back the cheerleaders. The kind who can tame a crowd by leading upbeat, positive cheers during sporting events, not the kind who became almost a cliché before they faded away.

George Bush was a cheerleader. And he became president. Cheering for others didn’t seem to hold him back from becoming top dog. FDR, Samuel L Jackson, Halle Barry, Steve Martin and Sheryl Crow were also cheerleaders. Not bad company.

Cheerleaders serve a very important purpose: Cheerleaders keep the crowd in the game and the players get energy from that crowd. Crowds need leaders and cheerleaders make great ones. Without them, a cheering crowd often descends into booing or name-calling. This makes school officials quite nervous.

Isn’t it time for cheerleading to make a comeback at the high school level?

Cheering vs. yelling

My daughter told me I yelled too loud at the last game. Oops. Fact is, I do yell at basketball games. But I call it cheering. She was sitting right in front of me so maybe it was just my volume that got on her nerves. Or [self-analysis here] perhaps I was yelling and not cheering. The truth is that one person's cheering is another person's unsportsmanlike conduct. And it's a lot easier to tell the difference in others than it is in yourself. We've all heard someone in the stands yell "Defense!" and by their inflection knew they meant "Go team! Play good-D!" And we've also heard someone yell the the same word "Defense!" and knew from their tone that they really meant "You idiots, do you even know how to play defense?!!!" I'd rather be in the first group. So maybe at the next game I'll just clap. It's hard to misinterpret a clap.

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