Cheer!

Reviewed By Stuart Nachbar
 

Last week, as research for a new book, I attended the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Association boys and girls basketball finals at Penn State. Sitting courtside near the spirit squads and cheerleaders was an eye-popping experience I had never gone through in my non-athletic high school days. The quality of play, as well as the quality of cheering was beyond my expectations. 

I never got to know any cheerleaders in high school outside of school and I never met any who cheered for the universities where I received my undergraduate and graduate degree. I just thought they were in a different world, and that I would only be an alien presence inside it. 

Cheer! by Kate Torgovnick, a former journalist for Jane magazine introduced me to the inner sanctum of competitive college cheerleading. Cheer! follows three college cheerleading squads: Southern University, Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Memphis in their quests for a national cheerleading championship. 

In Torgovnick’s story, it is interesting that colleges become confused as to whether cheerleaders are athletes or entertainers. There are anecdotes in Cheer! about split scholarships and cheerleaders asked to support revenue sports that their schools do not invite them to cheer in. And while cheerleaders are subordinated to the athletes in the events they do participate, they must raise their own money, or rely on their competitive association—the NCAA does not recognize cheerleading as a sport—to go to cheerleading competitions. 

In Cheer! three of my perceptions of college cheerleaders were proved true: the women work very hard to maintain their fitness and appearance, and they’re attracted to athletic men. But the attraction happens, according Torgovnick’s interviewees, because cheerleaders consider themselves athletes too.  Cheer! also confirms that college cheerleading is a culture, and that it’s happiest members try not to leave, even to the point where they frequently change schools to join squads that best match their talents or remain in college for as many as eight years to cheer on. 

The best symbol of the cheerleading culture mentioned in Cheer! is the letters LCLM by the Stephen F. Austin squad. No one is quite sure what LCLM means; there are guesses such as Lumberjack Cheer Lifetime Member; Live, Cheer, Love, Mind; Lumberjack Cheerleaders Love Me, and Love Comes Later, Man. What ever the meaning, the cheerleaders proudly wear LCLM tattoos and stitch the letters on their gear, as if they were members of a fraternity or sorority. 

If I were the father of a cheerleader, I would naturally become concerned about the costs of competition and the risk of injuries. But after reading Cheer! I would also need to consider if my daughter would fit in with the rest of the team. Unlike team sports such as football or basketball, a cheerleader does not have the luxury of taking a play off without letting their team down.

Stuart Nachbar operates http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology. He was involved with education politics and economic development for two decades as an urban planner, government affairs manager and a software executive. His first novel, The Sex Ed Chronicles, about sex education and school politics in 1980 New Jersey, was published this past fall.