November 2, 2009 • 27 mins
Since cheerleading first appeared on the scene, it has morphed from simple cheering into an extremely athletic activity. Does that make it a sport? In this episode, Molly and Cristen delve deep into the history and practices of cheerleading to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house Stop Works dot Com. Hey there, and
welcome to the podcast. Is this Kristen And this is Molly,
So Molly right now? My favorite character on television, Mad Menicide.
(00:28):
Favorite character on television is a cheerleading coach. Really, yes,
tell us about her? Well, she is for traded by
one of my all time favorite comedic actresses who we
did not mention in our Women in Comedy episode. And
I'm very sad to say, but now I'm going to
(00:49):
talk about her because she's awesome. And her name is
Jane Lynch. Yes, and she's hilarious and um, she's on
she plays a cheerleading coach, this insane psycho cheerleading coach
on the show Glee that's become pretty popular. And you know,
I can take or leave Glee. I usually I watch
(01:09):
it on Hulu a lot, and uh, and I usually
just kind of fast forward through the musical numbers and
just so that I can have undiluted Jane Lynch um
as uh Sue the crazy cheerleading coach over her team
of cheeriors, who she calls the Cheerios. So that's adorable.
Oh no, it's not adorable, Molly, but it is hilarious.
I do like the name cheerious cheerious. I mean I
(01:31):
like serial too. Yeah, but they portray, you know, the
like the it's it's all about the sort of the
high school stereotypes of like the evil cheerleaders who are
out to get the lame, nerdy glee clubbers. And to
be honest, Molly, um, I really just wanted to talk
about Jane Lynch. There's no real point to that anecdote,
but it does play in nicely to this topic we're
talking about today, which is is cheering or should cheerleading
(01:53):
be considered a sport? Because I guarantee you that if
Sue had coach of the Cheerios, had her way, would
definitely be considered a sport, right. I wanted to start
the podcast with all sorts of cheers and whatnot, and
Kristen was like, no, I'm talking about Jane Lynch. Didn't
care to cheer this morning. I'm sorry, Molly. See I
almost put on a skirt this morning just to get ready.
But that just feeds into what we think of as
(02:15):
the typical cheerleader in a skirt, loud yelling, scrunchy scrunchy,
yes and um, lots of flips, lots of clapping, basket tosses,
toe touches are my favorite. Yes, we did. We did
brush up on the cheerling terminology and preparation for this podcast.
I know, I know what a herkey is, and that
(02:37):
really dives way into the history of cheerland that we
should talk about. Because for you understand cheerleading, you've gotta
understand herkey and herkimer. Yes, so let's just dive in
with the first cheers, the first cheers, um, and because
that's weird to think about, because for me, cheering just
seems like a natural response to watching your favorite sports
(02:58):
team play. You gotta cheer, I mean before cheerleaders to
people just sit on their hands or do they do
snaps like people do in an avant garde cafe. People
always need a leader, Kristen. We're just blind sheep wandering around.
We need people designated to lead us in cheers. Yeah,
like someone to start the wave. If no one starts
(03:18):
the wave, yes, if it will never end, that's philosophical.
If no one starts, the wave will ever end. But
I doubt that was on the mind of the people
watching the very first intercollegiate football game in eighteen sixty
nine at Princeton University. Yes, between Princeton and Rutgers. That's
probably gonna be the only sports fact I'll retain for
any sort of trivia contest. But the first intercollegiate football
(03:40):
game between Princeton and Rutgers, and the Princeton crowd got
in on the action and started shouting, shouting things like sis,
boom raw. I wonder how they came up with those syllables.
That's how they got into Princeton. I guess this boom raw. Yeah,
those are the kind of minds at Ivy League schools.
And so by the eighties they had formed a whole
hep club, but it was all male because back in
(04:02):
those days mostly men were going to college. And so
Princeton grad Thomas Peebles took all the cheers he learned
in Princeton and went to the University of Minnesota, and
Minnesota just ate all this cheering up. They were like, yes,
we loved it. Cheer. We're gonna have to fight songs.
Football is be gonna come a just up a dynamic
event to attend and then Molly. Something happened on November
(04:24):
two when the University of Minnesota football team was down
for the count. He couldn't score. They were having a
hard time getting that pigskin over the line. A man
named Johnny Campbell decided to do something about it, and
he let a cheer. He let a cheer Molly that
would echo through the ages into today's football arenas. Okay,
(04:48):
Johnny Campbell started cheerleading. So on that day, the day
cheerleing was born, the day that will live in infamy,
Well not infamy, Molly, but go ahead. He picked up
the megaphone. He had five have other men with him.
They were designated yell leaders, and they rallied the team
to victory. Remember they've been in a slump, been in
a slum Minnesota, couldn't score by chatting raw raw raw
(05:15):
ski you ma hoorrah worrah varsity varsity Minnesota and a
little rhyme, I mean, how could cheerleading not catch on?
After that? And it did? The first organized cheerleading squadd
was born, and as American Cheerleader wrote, no sporting event
would ever be the same would ever be the same. Yea.
(05:36):
So we have Johnny Campbell and his team of five
yell leaders with their with their raw ra Minnesota Cheer
and UH. For a while after that, the cheer squads
were all male. Yes, And in nineteen three University of
Minnesota had another milestone when they first welcomed women to
(05:57):
the field. So what we think of is this very
stereotypical female activity started as male and really didn't become
predominantly female until World War Two when all the men
went off to war. And then in the nineteen forties
we have a man named Lawrence Herkimer, Yes, the father
(06:18):
of the Herkey arrived on the scene. And Herkimer loved cheering, yes,
probably more than anything else in the world in his
in the entire world. Cheering was his life, even his
loved one. And he invented, and he invented the signature
cheer jump called the Herkey. And it's basically like a
split in the air, but your back leg is bent.
(06:41):
And it's funny because Herkey was a little embarrassed about
the form of that jump because it was supposed to
be a perfect split, but actually in its flaw was
born the quintessential cheerleading maneuver. Yeah, this is the time
when I really behoove us to have some videos so
that Kristen could do some herkeys for you. She did
(07:02):
not seem enthused when she said that. But in he
officially incorporates the National Cheerleaders Association, and later on they're
gonna be a few more cheerleader associations. I read that
they all kind of have their own vibe, their own rules,
their own you know, things that they approve of in
the whole sharing spectrum. But this is the main one,
the first one, and another thing Hercy gave us. He
(07:22):
called it the shaker ru but then later it became
the pom po the pom pom. Well, he first called
a pom pawn because he heard that pom pom with
an M had vulgar connotations in other cultures. So Hercy,
thank you for trying to be politicularly incorrect, but we'll
take the pom pom. Pompon is just kind of hard
to say. Pompoon. Well, I thought it was a type
(07:44):
of when I was first reading it. But that's a
fun fact for you that it's technically a pom pawn
and the pompon is patented us patented so and he
also invented spirit sticks, which are kind of like pom
poms without the palm. I think a spirit that can
be anything. I mean, embody your spirit in it, Kristen.
(08:05):
Don't limit it to not having palms on it. Yeah.
And then we fast forward to the nineteen eighties, and
this is when cheerleading kind of goes on steroids, if
you will. That's not nice to cheerleaders, Kristen, Well, I
mean it metaphor molly, because this is the birth of
competitive cheerleading, when cheerleading really goes from the sidelines and
(08:26):
into the competition field room arena where they start doing
all these crazy moves, and cheerleing becomes a lot more
dangerous because girls are doing very high level maneuvers, gymnastic maneuvers.
Really right with Alpine eighties, we could have never had
the movie Bring It On for two cheerleaning teams compete.
(08:49):
And at the same time I was reading a lot
of schools used to have gymnastics programs and they got
cut because it was too costly to ensure all those gymnasts.
And so that's when gymnastics um gymnasts started moving into cheerleading.
Which is why you know, maybe at first they had
like one girl who could do flips and then to
just stay competitive to make the squad, basically everyone had
(09:09):
to be able to do like flips and pyramids and
all sorts of stuff. So should we talk about some
of the dangers that can happen when you do all
that crazy stuff? Yeah, it is not. It is not
for the faint of heart. I think if I were
forced to be on a cheerleading squad, well, I'm tall,
so this would happen anyway. But even if I or tiny,
I would prefer to be a base because I don't
(09:31):
want anyone throwing me up in the air and then
relying on them to catch me. I don't even like
trust falls. So yeah, I just got a lot of
ideas that how I could freak Kristin out. But regardless, um, yes,
there are the girls who are basis, and they're the
girls who fly. And now one of the problems is
that girls who fly the ones who are thrown up
in the air. Some schools have weight restrictions, so that
(09:53):
can possibly late to eating disorders for those girls. But
the reason they have weight restrictions isn't an attempt to
keep these stunts more safe because right now, like we said,
cheering is pretty unsafe. It's become the leading cause of
catastrophic injury and young female athletes, um and by that
I mean death disability related to head trauma and spine trauma,
and it causes six of those injuries in high school
or college sports. And the number of cheering accidents just
(10:14):
you know, like a sprain, a bruise, whatever. It was
five thousand in nineteen eighty before those competitions came on,
and now it's about twenty six thousand to twenty eight
thousand quadruple. Yeah, the risk of injury has certainly soared.
And because of that, college teams are no longer allowed
to perform three person high pyramids or do double flips,
and high school teams can't perform flipping basket tosses and
(10:39):
twisting dismounts are also banned on basketball courts because can
you imagine molly being tossed into the air and falling
on a basketball court. It can have some pretty serious consequences. UM.
For instance, I believe it was in either two thousand
three or two thousand four, high school cheerleader named Ashley
Burns actually died from a cheery accident. Right she landed
(11:01):
on her stomach and had caused her spleen interrupture. Um. Now,
I will say that some cheerleading advocates say that these
numbers might be sort of inflated for for weird reasons.
I mean, when you look at if when you put
it against um something like football. Um, this is these
numbers come from Kate to our Godnik, who wrote a
bookbout cheerling. She said, in any given year, six out
of every thousand cheerleaders end up in an emergency room,
(11:23):
but in football, forty two out of every thousand players
end up in an emergency room. So it may just
be that we're freaking out because these are young, attractive
girls as opposed to guys who you know, we're getting
hurt all the time and these really um aggressive sports.
Now I'm only an article from the Boston Globe actually
makes entirely different point about the risks of cheerleading. It
(11:46):
says that since the n c double As Catastrophic Injury
Insurance Program found that of its claims for all college
student athletes resulted from cheerleading, And then it points so
out that when you consider that the ratio of college
cheerleaders to football players is about twelve to one hundred.
(12:08):
It seems like a pretty huge figure now. Granted, a
majority of the injuries that cheerleaders sustain are more things
like muscle strains and pulls, and ligament and injuries and
ten tendon injuries. But the problem is we're seeing more
catastrophic injuries right. And it's worth noting also that cheerleaders
practice year round because they do all the sports, whereas
(12:29):
you know, a football player has a more limited season.
But how the ladies are getting this these injuries sort
of comes down to the question we're going to ask
to day is whether cheerleading is a sport or not
because you bring up those insurance claims, and that's sort
of like the one place where cheerleaders are definitively kind
as athletes is for that insurance purpose. The only recently
(12:50):
became available for this kind of insurance um and it's
up to schools and states to decide what kind of
oversight as an organ you know, as a sport or
as an activity that cheerleading has. In some states, it's
akin to being on the debate team, where you just
have a faculty advisor and it doesn't have to be
anyone with any sort of training. It's just someone who
(13:11):
has the time and the desire to work with girls
who want to cheerlead. Um, if it was a sport,
you might have a more trained coach who could perhaps
you know, teach girls to do things so they don't
get as many injuries, kind of like Sue on Glee.
She also ruins girls self esteem in the meantime, but
she is very well trained. Sorry, I just keep pluging, plugging,
Jane Lynch, I can't stop. That's okay. But yeah, So
(13:33):
this is the question, is if a school calls cheering
a sport, they're going to have to invest in a
really well trained coach who has to go to all
these camps and all these training seminars to learn about cheerleading. Um.
And some schools just don't have the money for that.
So sometimes it's a question of finance. You know, if
we're going to make it a sport, do we give
you know, girls equal time and a gym to practice?
Are they just in a classroom practice sing can affward
(13:54):
to buy the mats and so on and so forth,
and so it's really, um, it's sort of a mess.
In reading about all the places where it's considered a
sport versus where it's considered an activity. So some are
wondering whether we should just buy and large say hey,
this is a sport because it's really athletic. Look at
all these flips are doing. They compete, etcetera, etcetera. And
some are just saying, hey, these are girls who cheer
(14:15):
on the sideline. Yeah, because right now we can't give
you a specific number of how many college cheerleaders there
are in the US, because the n C Double A
doesn't even track it because it does not consider it
a sport. But um it, like you said, it has
extended its catastrophic Injury coverage insurance coverage to cheerleaders, but
because of the high incidences of claims made by cheerleaders
(14:38):
as of August two thousand and six, in order to
be covered by the n C Double A UM Catastrophic
Injury Insurance program, it requires that all collegiate squads be
supervised by a coach with safety certification by the American
Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors. Now, on a high
school level, only fifteen to eighteen states actually regulate cheerleading
(15:00):
that closely. So to answer whether it should be a
sport or not with the with the legitimate coach, let's
go to the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and administrator's
position paper on this very topic. And they looked at
another position paper by the Women's Sports Foundation that defined
a sport, because if we're going to call a sport,
we're gonna be really definitive about it. And they said,
(15:22):
a sport activity is one that involved propelling a mass
through space or overcoming the resistance of a mass, contesting
or competing against with an opponent, governed by rules which
explicitly define the time, space and purpose of the contest
and the conditions under which a winner has declared, and
the acknowledged primary purpose of the competition is a comparison
(15:43):
of the relative skills of the participants. So it's easy
to see how something like baseball's a sport. Okay, you've
got the mass hurtling through the air. Um, you've got rules,
you've got you know, very clear ways to win or
lose a game. Now, in cheerleading, the mass propelling through
space is obviously another person um competing against with an opponent.
This is the big hang up because cheerleading can be
(16:06):
a competitive sport. There are squads who aren't even associated
with schools who go off to these competitions, but it's
not like the two squads are facing off against each
other at the same time. They compete and then their
judge on their performance, and then so on and so forth.
So that's why this American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and
(16:27):
Administrators have said it's not a sport. Cheering is not
a sport because you know it's there, you know, it's
just a judge of one performance against another. Yeah, they
say that it doesn't meet that criteria, and because of that,
they suggest developing an entirely new category for cheerleading called
an athletic activity, which kind of sounds like a sport
(16:48):
to me as well, but I guess it would be
kind of different because they say that dance drial teams
in marching bands could also possibly be folded into this. Now,
one thing when we're researching this casts that I really
liked was this paper written by Laura grind Steph and
Emily West called Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport,
and it went and actually asked cheerleaders hey should this
(17:10):
be a sport or not. And the real reason that cheerleaders,
and they talked about male and female cheerleader, we should
probably specify that, Um, the real reason that cheerleaders wanted
this to be a sport was so they would get
their respect that playing a sport entailed. You know, obviously,
if you think back to high school, I remember, you know,
everyone liked the football team, you know, respected them for
what they were doing, and cheerleaders were just sort of there,
(17:33):
you know, sort of accessories on the field. Right. So
girls who obviously work hard and are really athletic at
you know, doing these amazing stunts want the credit naturally
for what they're doing, and they want the respect that
goes with a sport. Makes sense. They put a lot
of time and effort into it. Uh And like I mean,
I respect the fact that they are willing to be
tossed very high into the air and then caught entrusting arms.
(17:57):
I couldn't do it. So the argument that this paper makes,
so Kristen, is that, um, they want this respect. Obviously,
both males and females were involved in cheerleading want their respect.
But the very fact that it's males and females maybe
what undermines its status as a sport. But Molly wouldn't
it doesn't it seem great though. The competitive cheerleading is
(18:19):
really one of the only mainstream sports that men and
women compete side by side. We'll see. That was what
the paper was saying, is that it seems almost like
this really cool evolution of athletics that it started is
just sort of the sideline activity announced morphed into this
thing that you have to be in great shape to do. Um.
You know, the male cheerers work outside by side with
football players. But by that very sort of evolution, that's
(18:41):
what's undermining it. If the men become hyper masculine almost
to prove that they're just as athletic as a football player. Um.
Probably at the same time, with the girls are doing
is still maintaining the kind of girly um accessories of cheerlead,
the short skirts, the hair, the makeup, the pom ponds.
(19:01):
Could we used the phrase heteroonormative, Allie, we could? I
think from this point out almost head using the word
header normative could be could be a drinking game. I
don't want to suggest people drink during this podcast, but
this paper really goes into the heteronormative things that cheerleading represents.
For one, the sideline function. You got women on the
sides cheering, and they're saying this could be likened to
(19:24):
heteronormative relationship where the woman is the cheerleader for the
breadwinning husband and um. The paper asked a lot of
these male cheerleaders, hey, what do you think about being
on the sideline cheering for the guys, and they're like,
we hate it. The only reason we do cheering is
to go to these competitions and throw girls in the air.
So to sum it up, while we have this athleticism
(19:45):
and girls want to have respect for the athleticism that
they're demonstrating on the on the sidelines. Emily West and
her colleague are arguing that it's really flawed societal norms
that are holding cheerleading back from really getting the respect
that it deserves exactly. I mean, it's an exaggerated argument,
I think, but I think it's you know, when you
(20:06):
think about a guy who's a cheerleader who wants to
be seen as an athlete as opposed to a stereotype
of a gay cheerleader, then yeah, they're going to over
emphasize how masculine they are, which I think, in turn
would cause the females to say, hey, we're still cute,
we're still attractive, We're still like the most popular girls
in school. I mean, it's such a female icon that
(20:28):
women are always trying to fulfill the role. Well, Molly.
Gender politics aside, Uh, there is still this issue of
competition competitive cheerleading and whether or not it's so dangerous
and so unregulated that it really just shouldn't be happening
um or if it deserves to get more attention and
more funding from schools to make it a safer and
(20:49):
classified sport is something that I think is still needs
to be worked out. And it's interesting that Lawrence Herkimer
a k a. The father of the Herkey Ky. Yeah,
he's waiting on this as well, and he's kind of
concerned about this over emphasis on the competitive side of
cheerleading because he thinks that it gets away from the
heart of cheerleading, which you know, it's what it was
(21:12):
what was demonstrated by Johnny Campbell on November two. You know,
as far as this boom, this boom ram in a sota, Uh,
it's it's it gets away from the spirit of cheerleading
is as a a way to unify a school to
cheer on their their athletes. Right, it comes down to
what will rally up the crowd. Basically, Herkey thinks that
(21:34):
cheerleading squads have to be assets to their school. They
need to provide school spirit. And it comes down to
whether you think school spirit is watching a girl flip
across the field or whether it's just having a girl
lead you in a cheer And then, Molly, if cheerleading
becomes a sport, who will cheer for the cheerleader's sister?
(21:55):
And that's one argument that cheerleaders made when they were
asked by Laura Grindstaff and Emily West whether they were
a sport. It is like, how can of sport cheer
on a sport? Yeah, so, I mean that's another philosophical quandary. Yeah,
I think we're getting into some strange like postmodern debate
over skirts. It's heavy, you know what Yukon's doing. Yes,
(22:15):
they are getting rid of a of the cheering squad
with gymnasts. Basically, if you're trying out for their cheerleading squad,
their spirit squad, no gymnastic ability is required. You just
go you yell, yell your heart out, cheer on Yukon
and gymnasts not welcome. Yeah. So I mean I think
(22:37):
maybe we could see this thing divide into two things.
One would be like competitive cheerleading, but it seems more
like a dance squad almost, and then one would just
be school spirit squads. So to sum it up, Molly,
should cheerleading be considered a sport according to that American
Association of Cheerleading Coaches. Not yet. No, I mean I
(22:58):
think it remains to be seen. I almost wonder if
the split would be the best thing. Yeah, but I
think that would break called Harkey's heart. It would break
the spirit sticking too. Oh No, But I think no
matter what, Molly, as long as competitive cheerleading is going on,
because competitive cheerleading isn't gonna stop. You know, there are
far too many, far too many organizations and teams that
(23:18):
are competing right now. But the number one thing that
needs to happen is they need to make competitive cheerleading safer,
whether they consider it a sport or not. Having cheerleading
account for six of all female catastrophic injuries shows that
something needs to be done, right. I agree, and you know,
I think also we need to just sort of everyone
needs to change their stereotypes about cheerleaders. They are pretty
(23:40):
unfairly stereotyped, as you know, dumb lawns and skirts, the cheerios,
the cheerios. Yeah, and so I think that because it's
such a female icon, people can twist it around to
either fit of stereotype they want or to break it,
which brings us to our last point, which is the
issue of radical cheerleaders. Yeah. Radical cheer leaders are groups
(24:02):
of people who get together to basically use cheerleading tactics
to protest and demonstrate as a form of activism. And
it was started in the mid nineteen nineties by two
sisters from Florida, Amy and Kara Jennings. And so Amy
sees cheerleaders a positive role models as opposed to that
(24:22):
mean girl stereotype. You know. She says, they're athletes, they're strong,
they work really hard, and she thought that the same
principles of firing up a crowd just so easily translated
to activism. So now they are these loose networks of
men and women who get together and will do cheerleading
moves to protest things like Liverpool wages. Um, they'll cheer
against wars for peace, and they'll march in pride parades
(24:45):
all sorts of stuff. Um, I will say. There was
a quote from the editorial director of American Cheerleader magazine,
Sheila Noon, who when she was asked about these liberal
squads who sometimes grow out go out and their pom
poms are made of like garbage bags and then like,
you know, jokey kind of costumes. She was like, it
is a warping of what cheerleading us all about. Cheerleaders
(25:06):
have an uphill battle gaining respect, and that's the last
thing we need. So that's her opinion. But maybe we
just all need to all respect cheerleaders and all women
and all men, because really, Molly, at the end of
the day, everybody can be a cheerleader. I cheerlead for you, Kristin,
thank you, nice for you. You You know it's a long
time to respond. No, I do, I do, sincerely, And
(25:30):
you know who else? I cheer for our listeners, our listeners. Yes,
let's do a listener mail. This one actually sort of
relates to cheerleading, kind of indirectly. This is from Andrew,
who wrote in I'm kind of upset you read a
listeners mail that was very male bashing and promoted women
to be the only good and said you liked it.
(25:51):
Part of what they said was that most men are
scumbags while most women are good. That's a very discriminating comment.
What about women that leave guys with the kids. I've
been engaged three times and apparently that was the cue
for them to go cheating. Other than that, I've been
cheating on plenty of times, yet I've never cheated. So
I'm sorry. I didn't realize you read a mail listener
mail that was so um so hurtful. We want to
(26:12):
cheer on mails as well. Yes, I mean this is
a podcast where we talk a lot of a lot
of issues from a female perspective, which people have written
in and said, you know sometimes that we might um
trivialize the male's point of view in that. Yeah, but
we do want to cheer on the men because here
at Mom's Stuff, we appreciate men and women alike. Yes,
as Andrew put it, there are bad men and good men,
(26:34):
bad women and good women too. So sorry for anything
that might have come off as a little too mail bashing,
because we accept and love everyone sispomba, sispoomba listen are
so if really rhymes? No it doesn't. You can work
on it a uh so. If you have anything that
you would like to send our way, please send us
(26:55):
an email at Mom's Stuff at hell stuff works dot com.
And you also have a blog you can check out.
It's called how to Stuff and you can also head
over to our website to see other things Molly and
I are working on. It is how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(27:16):
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com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house Stop Works dot Com. Hey there, and
welcome to the podcast. Is this Kristen And this is Molly,
So Molly right now? My favorite character on television, Mad Menicide.
(00:28):
Favorite character on television is a cheerleading coach. Really, yes,
tell us about her? Well, she is for traded by
one of my all time favorite comedic actresses who we
did not mention in our Women in Comedy episode. And
I'm very sad to say, but now I'm going to
(00:49):
talk about her because she's awesome. And her name is
Jane Lynch. Yes, and she's hilarious and um, she's on
she plays a cheerleading coach, this insane psycho cheerleading coach
on the show Glee that's become pretty popular. And you know,
I can take or leave Glee. I usually I watch
(01:09):
it on Hulu a lot, and uh, and I usually
just kind of fast forward through the musical numbers and
just so that I can have undiluted Jane Lynch um
as uh Sue the crazy cheerleading coach over her team
of cheeriors, who she calls the Cheerios. So that's adorable.
Oh no, it's not adorable, Molly, but it is hilarious.
I do like the name cheerious cheerious. I mean I
(01:31):
like serial too. Yeah, but they portray, you know, the
like the it's it's all about the sort of the
high school stereotypes of like the evil cheerleaders who are
out to get the lame, nerdy glee clubbers. And to
be honest, Molly, um, I really just wanted to talk
about Jane Lynch. There's no real point to that anecdote,
but it does play in nicely to this topic we're
talking about today, which is is cheering or should cheerleading
(01:53):
be considered a sport? Because I guarantee you that if
Sue had coach of the Cheerios, had her way, would
definitely be considered a sport, right. I wanted to start
the podcast with all sorts of cheers and whatnot, and
Kristen was like, no, I'm talking about Jane Lynch. Didn't
care to cheer this morning. I'm sorry, Molly. See I
almost put on a skirt this morning just to get ready.
But that just feeds into what we think of as
(02:15):
the typical cheerleader in a skirt, loud yelling, scrunchy scrunchy,
yes and um, lots of flips, lots of clapping, basket tosses,
toe touches are my favorite. Yes, we did. We did
brush up on the cheerling terminology and preparation for this podcast.
I know, I know what a herkey is, and that
(02:37):
really dives way into the history of cheerland that we
should talk about. Because for you understand cheerleading, you've gotta
understand herkey and herkimer. Yes, so let's just dive in
with the first cheers, the first cheers, um, and because
that's weird to think about, because for me, cheering just
seems like a natural response to watching your favorite sports
(02:58):
team play. You gotta cheer, I mean before cheerleaders to
people just sit on their hands or do they do
snaps like people do in an avant garde cafe. People
always need a leader, Kristen. We're just blind sheep wandering around.
We need people designated to lead us in cheers. Yeah,
like someone to start the wave. If no one starts
(03:18):
the wave, yes, if it will never end, that's philosophical.
If no one starts, the wave will ever end. But
I doubt that was on the mind of the people
watching the very first intercollegiate football game in eighteen sixty
nine at Princeton University. Yes, between Princeton and Rutgers. That's
probably gonna be the only sports fact I'll retain for
any sort of trivia contest. But the first intercollegiate football
(03:40):
game between Princeton and Rutgers, and the Princeton crowd got
in on the action and started shouting, shouting things like sis,
boom raw. I wonder how they came up with those syllables.
That's how they got into Princeton. I guess this boom raw. Yeah,
those are the kind of minds at Ivy League schools.
And so by the eighties they had formed a whole
hep club, but it was all male because back in
(04:02):
those days mostly men were going to college. And so
Princeton grad Thomas Peebles took all the cheers he learned
in Princeton and went to the University of Minnesota, and
Minnesota just ate all this cheering up. They were like, yes,
we loved it. Cheer. We're gonna have to fight songs.
Football is be gonna come a just up a dynamic
event to attend and then Molly. Something happened on November
(04:24):
two when the University of Minnesota football team was down
for the count. He couldn't score. They were having a
hard time getting that pigskin over the line. A man
named Johnny Campbell decided to do something about it, and
he let a cheer. He let a cheer Molly that
would echo through the ages into today's football arenas. Okay,
(04:48):
Johnny Campbell started cheerleading. So on that day, the day
cheerleing was born, the day that will live in infamy,
Well not infamy, Molly, but go ahead. He picked up
the megaphone. He had five have other men with him.
They were designated yell leaders, and they rallied the team
to victory. Remember they've been in a slump, been in
a slum Minnesota, couldn't score by chatting raw raw raw
(05:15):
ski you ma hoorrah worrah varsity varsity Minnesota and a
little rhyme, I mean, how could cheerleading not catch on?
After that? And it did? The first organized cheerleading squadd
was born, and as American Cheerleader wrote, no sporting event
would ever be the same would ever be the same. Yea.
(05:36):
So we have Johnny Campbell and his team of five
yell leaders with their with their raw ra Minnesota Cheer
and UH. For a while after that, the cheer squads
were all male. Yes, And in nineteen three University of
Minnesota had another milestone when they first welcomed women to
(05:57):
the field. So what we think of is this very
stereotypical female activity started as male and really didn't become
predominantly female until World War Two when all the men
went off to war. And then in the nineteen forties
we have a man named Lawrence Herkimer, Yes, the father
(06:18):
of the Herkey arrived on the scene. And Herkimer loved cheering, yes,
probably more than anything else in the world in his
in the entire world. Cheering was his life, even his
loved one. And he invented, and he invented the signature
cheer jump called the Herkey. And it's basically like a
split in the air, but your back leg is bent.
(06:41):
And it's funny because Herkey was a little embarrassed about
the form of that jump because it was supposed to
be a perfect split, but actually in its flaw was
born the quintessential cheerleading maneuver. Yeah, this is the time
when I really behoove us to have some videos so
that Kristen could do some herkeys for you. She did
(07:02):
not seem enthused when she said that. But in he
officially incorporates the National Cheerleaders Association, and later on they're
gonna be a few more cheerleader associations. I read that
they all kind of have their own vibe, their own rules,
their own you know, things that they approve of in
the whole sharing spectrum. But this is the main one,
the first one, and another thing Hercy gave us. He
(07:22):
called it the shaker ru but then later it became
the pom po the pom pom. Well, he first called
a pom pawn because he heard that pom pom with
an M had vulgar connotations in other cultures. So Hercy,
thank you for trying to be politicularly incorrect, but we'll
take the pom pom. Pompon is just kind of hard
to say. Pompoon. Well, I thought it was a type
(07:44):
of when I was first reading it. But that's a
fun fact for you that it's technically a pom pawn
and the pompon is patented us patented so and he
also invented spirit sticks, which are kind of like pom
poms without the palm. I think a spirit that can
be anything. I mean, embody your spirit in it, Kristen.
(08:05):
Don't limit it to not having palms on it. Yeah.
And then we fast forward to the nineteen eighties, and
this is when cheerleading kind of goes on steroids, if
you will. That's not nice to cheerleaders, Kristen, Well, I
mean it metaphor molly, because this is the birth of
competitive cheerleading, when cheerleading really goes from the sidelines and
(08:26):
into the competition field room arena where they start doing
all these crazy moves, and cheerleing becomes a lot more
dangerous because girls are doing very high level maneuvers, gymnastic maneuvers.
Really right with Alpine eighties, we could have never had
the movie Bring It On for two cheerleaning teams compete.
(08:49):
And at the same time I was reading a lot
of schools used to have gymnastics programs and they got
cut because it was too costly to ensure all those gymnasts.
And so that's when gymnastics um gymnasts started moving into cheerleading.
Which is why you know, maybe at first they had
like one girl who could do flips and then to
just stay competitive to make the squad, basically everyone had
(09:09):
to be able to do like flips and pyramids and
all sorts of stuff. So should we talk about some
of the dangers that can happen when you do all
that crazy stuff? Yeah, it is not. It is not
for the faint of heart. I think if I were
forced to be on a cheerleading squad, well, I'm tall,
so this would happen anyway. But even if I or tiny,
I would prefer to be a base because I don't
(09:31):
want anyone throwing me up in the air and then
relying on them to catch me. I don't even like
trust falls. So yeah, I just got a lot of
ideas that how I could freak Kristin out. But regardless, um, yes,
there are the girls who are basis, and they're the
girls who fly. And now one of the problems is
that girls who fly the ones who are thrown up
in the air. Some schools have weight restrictions, so that
(09:53):
can possibly late to eating disorders for those girls. But
the reason they have weight restrictions isn't an attempt to
keep these stunts more safe because right now, like we said,
cheering is pretty unsafe. It's become the leading cause of
catastrophic injury and young female athletes, um and by that
I mean death disability related to head trauma and spine trauma,
and it causes six of those injuries in high school
or college sports. And the number of cheering accidents just
(10:14):
you know, like a sprain, a bruise, whatever. It was
five thousand in nineteen eighty before those competitions came on,
and now it's about twenty six thousand to twenty eight
thousand quadruple. Yeah, the risk of injury has certainly soared.
And because of that, college teams are no longer allowed
to perform three person high pyramids or do double flips,
and high school teams can't perform flipping basket tosses and
(10:39):
twisting dismounts are also banned on basketball courts because can
you imagine molly being tossed into the air and falling
on a basketball court. It can have some pretty serious consequences. UM.
For instance, I believe it was in either two thousand
three or two thousand four, high school cheerleader named Ashley
Burns actually died from a cheery accident. Right she landed
(11:01):
on her stomach and had caused her spleen interrupture. Um. Now,
I will say that some cheerleading advocates say that these
numbers might be sort of inflated for for weird reasons.
I mean, when you look at if when you put
it against um something like football. Um, this is these
numbers come from Kate to our Godnik, who wrote a
bookbout cheerling. She said, in any given year, six out
of every thousand cheerleaders end up in an emergency room,
(11:23):
but in football, forty two out of every thousand players
end up in an emergency room. So it may just
be that we're freaking out because these are young, attractive
girls as opposed to guys who you know, we're getting
hurt all the time and these really um aggressive sports.
Now I'm only an article from the Boston Globe actually
makes entirely different point about the risks of cheerleading. It
(11:46):
says that since the n c double As Catastrophic Injury
Insurance Program found that of its claims for all college
student athletes resulted from cheerleading, And then it points so
out that when you consider that the ratio of college
cheerleaders to football players is about twelve to one hundred.
(12:08):
It seems like a pretty huge figure now. Granted, a
majority of the injuries that cheerleaders sustain are more things
like muscle strains and pulls, and ligament and injuries and
ten tendon injuries. But the problem is we're seeing more
catastrophic injuries right. And it's worth noting also that cheerleaders
practice year round because they do all the sports, whereas
(12:29):
you know, a football player has a more limited season.
But how the ladies are getting this these injuries sort
of comes down to the question we're going to ask
to day is whether cheerleading is a sport or not
because you bring up those insurance claims, and that's sort
of like the one place where cheerleaders are definitively kind
as athletes is for that insurance purpose. The only recently
(12:50):
became available for this kind of insurance um and it's
up to schools and states to decide what kind of
oversight as an organ you know, as a sport or
as an activity that cheerleading has. In some states, it's
akin to being on the debate team, where you just
have a faculty advisor and it doesn't have to be
anyone with any sort of training. It's just someone who
(13:11):
has the time and the desire to work with girls
who want to cheerlead. Um, if it was a sport,
you might have a more trained coach who could perhaps
you know, teach girls to do things so they don't
get as many injuries, kind of like Sue on Glee.
She also ruins girls self esteem in the meantime, but
she is very well trained. Sorry, I just keep pluging, plugging,
Jane Lynch, I can't stop. That's okay. But yeah, So
(13:33):
this is the question, is if a school calls cheering
a sport, they're going to have to invest in a
really well trained coach who has to go to all
these camps and all these training seminars to learn about cheerleading. Um.
And some schools just don't have the money for that.
So sometimes it's a question of finance. You know, if
we're going to make it a sport, do we give
you know, girls equal time and a gym to practice?
Are they just in a classroom practice sing can affward
(13:54):
to buy the mats and so on and so forth,
and so it's really, um, it's sort of a mess.
In reading about all the places where it's considered a
sport versus where it's considered an activity. So some are
wondering whether we should just buy and large say hey,
this is a sport because it's really athletic. Look at
all these flips are doing. They compete, etcetera, etcetera. And
some are just saying, hey, these are girls who cheer
(14:15):
on the sideline. Yeah, because right now we can't give
you a specific number of how many college cheerleaders there
are in the US, because the n C Double A
doesn't even track it because it does not consider it
a sport. But um it, like you said, it has
extended its catastrophic Injury coverage insurance coverage to cheerleaders, but
because of the high incidences of claims made by cheerleaders
(14:38):
as of August two thousand and six, in order to
be covered by the n C Double A UM Catastrophic
Injury Insurance program, it requires that all collegiate squads be
supervised by a coach with safety certification by the American
Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors. Now, on a high
school level, only fifteen to eighteen states actually regulate cheerleading
(15:00):
that closely. So to answer whether it should be a
sport or not with the with the legitimate coach, let's
go to the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and administrator's
position paper on this very topic. And they looked at
another position paper by the Women's Sports Foundation that defined
a sport, because if we're going to call a sport,
we're gonna be really definitive about it. And they said,
(15:22):
a sport activity is one that involved propelling a mass
through space or overcoming the resistance of a mass, contesting
or competing against with an opponent, governed by rules which
explicitly define the time, space and purpose of the contest
and the conditions under which a winner has declared, and
the acknowledged primary purpose of the competition is a comparison
(15:43):
of the relative skills of the participants. So it's easy
to see how something like baseball's a sport. Okay, you've
got the mass hurtling through the air. Um, you've got rules,
you've got you know, very clear ways to win or
lose a game. Now, in cheerleading, the mass propelling through
space is obviously another person um competing against with an opponent.
This is the big hang up because cheerleading can be
(16:06):
a competitive sport. There are squads who aren't even associated
with schools who go off to these competitions, but it's
not like the two squads are facing off against each
other at the same time. They compete and then their
judge on their performance, and then so on and so forth.
So that's why this American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and
(16:27):
Administrators have said it's not a sport. Cheering is not
a sport because you know it's there, you know, it's
just a judge of one performance against another. Yeah, they
say that it doesn't meet that criteria, and because of that,
they suggest developing an entirely new category for cheerleading called
an athletic activity, which kind of sounds like a sport
(16:48):
to me as well, but I guess it would be
kind of different because they say that dance drial teams
in marching bands could also possibly be folded into this. Now,
one thing when we're researching this casts that I really
liked was this paper written by Laura grind Steph and
Emily West called Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport,
and it went and actually asked cheerleaders hey should this
(17:10):
be a sport or not. And the real reason that cheerleaders,
and they talked about male and female cheerleader, we should
probably specify that, Um, the real reason that cheerleaders wanted
this to be a sport was so they would get
their respect that playing a sport entailed. You know, obviously,
if you think back to high school, I remember, you know,
everyone liked the football team, you know, respected them for
what they were doing, and cheerleaders were just sort of there,
(17:33):
you know, sort of accessories on the field. Right. So
girls who obviously work hard and are really athletic at
you know, doing these amazing stunts want the credit naturally
for what they're doing, and they want the respect that
goes with a sport. Makes sense. They put a lot
of time and effort into it. Uh And like I mean,
I respect the fact that they are willing to be
tossed very high into the air and then caught entrusting arms.
(17:57):
I couldn't do it. So the argument that this paper makes,
so Kristen, is that, um, they want this respect. Obviously,
both males and females were involved in cheerleading want their respect.
But the very fact that it's males and females maybe
what undermines its status as a sport. But Molly wouldn't
it doesn't it seem great though. The competitive cheerleading is
(18:19):
really one of the only mainstream sports that men and
women compete side by side. We'll see. That was what
the paper was saying, is that it seems almost like
this really cool evolution of athletics that it started is
just sort of the sideline activity announced morphed into this
thing that you have to be in great shape to do. Um.
You know, the male cheerers work outside by side with
football players. But by that very sort of evolution, that's
(18:41):
what's undermining it. If the men become hyper masculine almost
to prove that they're just as athletic as a football player. Um.
Probably at the same time, with the girls are doing
is still maintaining the kind of girly um accessories of cheerlead,
the short skirts, the hair, the makeup, the pom ponds.
(19:01):
Could we used the phrase heteroonormative, Allie, we could? I
think from this point out almost head using the word
header normative could be could be a drinking game. I
don't want to suggest people drink during this podcast, but
this paper really goes into the heteronormative things that cheerleading represents.
For one, the sideline function. You got women on the
sides cheering, and they're saying this could be likened to
(19:24):
heteronormative relationship where the woman is the cheerleader for the
breadwinning husband and um. The paper asked a lot of
these male cheerleaders, hey, what do you think about being
on the sideline cheering for the guys, and they're like,
we hate it. The only reason we do cheering is
to go to these competitions and throw girls in the air.
So to sum it up, while we have this athleticism
(19:45):
and girls want to have respect for the athleticism that
they're demonstrating on the on the sidelines. Emily West and
her colleague are arguing that it's really flawed societal norms
that are holding cheerleading back from really getting the respect
that it deserves exactly. I mean, it's an exaggerated argument,
I think, but I think it's you know, when you
(20:06):
think about a guy who's a cheerleader who wants to
be seen as an athlete as opposed to a stereotype
of a gay cheerleader, then yeah, they're going to over
emphasize how masculine they are, which I think, in turn
would cause the females to say, hey, we're still cute,
we're still attractive, We're still like the most popular girls
in school. I mean, it's such a female icon that
(20:28):
women are always trying to fulfill the role. Well, Molly.
Gender politics aside, Uh, there is still this issue of
competition competitive cheerleading and whether or not it's so dangerous
and so unregulated that it really just shouldn't be happening
um or if it deserves to get more attention and
more funding from schools to make it a safer and
(20:49):
classified sport is something that I think is still needs
to be worked out. And it's interesting that Lawrence Herkimer
a k a. The father of the Herkey Ky. Yeah,
he's waiting on this as well, and he's kind of
concerned about this over emphasis on the competitive side of
cheerleading because he thinks that it gets away from the
heart of cheerleading, which you know, it's what it was
(21:12):
what was demonstrated by Johnny Campbell on November two. You know,
as far as this boom, this boom ram in a sota, Uh,
it's it's it gets away from the spirit of cheerleading
is as a a way to unify a school to
cheer on their their athletes. Right, it comes down to
what will rally up the crowd. Basically, Herkey thinks that
(21:34):
cheerleading squads have to be assets to their school. They
need to provide school spirit. And it comes down to
whether you think school spirit is watching a girl flip
across the field or whether it's just having a girl
lead you in a cheer And then, Molly, if cheerleading
becomes a sport, who will cheer for the cheerleader's sister?
(21:55):
And that's one argument that cheerleaders made when they were
asked by Laura Grindstaff and Emily West whether they were
a sport. It is like, how can of sport cheer
on a sport? Yeah, so, I mean that's another philosophical quandary. Yeah,
I think we're getting into some strange like postmodern debate
over skirts. It's heavy, you know what Yukon's doing. Yes,
(22:15):
they are getting rid of a of the cheering squad
with gymnasts. Basically, if you're trying out for their cheerleading squad,
their spirit squad, no gymnastic ability is required. You just
go you yell, yell your heart out, cheer on Yukon
and gymnasts not welcome. Yeah. So I mean I think
(22:37):
maybe we could see this thing divide into two things.
One would be like competitive cheerleading, but it seems more
like a dance squad almost, and then one would just
be school spirit squads. So to sum it up, Molly,
should cheerleading be considered a sport according to that American
Association of Cheerleading Coaches. Not yet. No, I mean I
(22:58):
think it remains to be seen. I almost wonder if
the split would be the best thing. Yeah, but I
think that would break called Harkey's heart. It would break
the spirit sticking too. Oh No, But I think no
matter what, Molly, as long as competitive cheerleading is going on,
because competitive cheerleading isn't gonna stop. You know, there are
far too many, far too many organizations and teams that
(23:18):
are competing right now. But the number one thing that
needs to happen is they need to make competitive cheerleading safer,
whether they consider it a sport or not. Having cheerleading
account for six of all female catastrophic injuries shows that
something needs to be done, right. I agree, and you know,
I think also we need to just sort of everyone
needs to change their stereotypes about cheerleaders. They are pretty
(23:40):
unfairly stereotyped, as you know, dumb lawns and skirts, the cheerios,
the cheerios. Yeah, and so I think that because it's
such a female icon, people can twist it around to
either fit of stereotype they want or to break it,
which brings us to our last point, which is the
issue of radical cheerleaders. Yeah. Radical cheer leaders are groups
(24:02):
of people who get together to basically use cheerleading tactics
to protest and demonstrate as a form of activism. And
it was started in the mid nineteen nineties by two
sisters from Florida, Amy and Kara Jennings. And so Amy
sees cheerleaders a positive role models as opposed to that
(24:22):
mean girl stereotype. You know. She says, they're athletes, they're strong,
they work really hard, and she thought that the same
principles of firing up a crowd just so easily translated
to activism. So now they are these loose networks of
men and women who get together and will do cheerleading
moves to protest things like Liverpool wages. Um, they'll cheer
against wars for peace, and they'll march in pride parades
(24:45):
all sorts of stuff. Um, I will say. There was
a quote from the editorial director of American Cheerleader magazine,
Sheila Noon, who when she was asked about these liberal
squads who sometimes grow out go out and their pom
poms are made of like garbage bags and then like,
you know, jokey kind of costumes. She was like, it
is a warping of what cheerleading us all about. Cheerleaders
(25:06):
have an uphill battle gaining respect, and that's the last
thing we need. So that's her opinion. But maybe we
just all need to all respect cheerleaders and all women
and all men, because really, Molly, at the end of
the day, everybody can be a cheerleader. I cheerlead for you, Kristin,
thank you, nice for you. You You know it's a long
time to respond. No, I do, I do, sincerely, And
(25:30):
you know who else? I cheer for our listeners, our listeners. Yes,
let's do a listener mail. This one actually sort of
relates to cheerleading, kind of indirectly. This is from Andrew,
who wrote in I'm kind of upset you read a
listeners mail that was very male bashing and promoted women
to be the only good and said you liked it.
(25:51):
Part of what they said was that most men are
scumbags while most women are good. That's a very discriminating comment.
What about women that leave guys with the kids. I've
been engaged three times and apparently that was the cue
for them to go cheating. Other than that, I've been
cheating on plenty of times, yet I've never cheated. So
I'm sorry. I didn't realize you read a mail listener
mail that was so um so hurtful. We want to
(26:12):
cheer on mails as well. Yes, I mean this is
a podcast where we talk a lot of a lot
of issues from a female perspective, which people have written
in and said, you know sometimes that we might um
trivialize the male's point of view in that. Yeah, but
we do want to cheer on the men because here
at Mom's Stuff, we appreciate men and women alike. Yes,
as Andrew put it, there are bad men and good men,
(26:34):
bad women and good women too. So sorry for anything
that might have come off as a little too mail bashing,
because we accept and love everyone sispomba, sispoomba listen are
so if really rhymes? No it doesn't. You can work
on it a uh so. If you have anything that
you would like to send our way, please send us
(26:55):
an email at Mom's Stuff at hell stuff works dot com.
And you also have a blog you can check out.
It's called how to Stuff and you can also head
over to our website to see other things Molly and
I are working on. It is how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(27:16):
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
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