Posted on 08/14/2004 4:47:03 PM PDT by NYC GOP Chick
OME December, judges who consider the cheerleading performance of the Georgia All-Stars at the Battle Under the Big Top competition in Atlanta may face a peculiar challenge. They will have to decide not only whether the squad has the best routine, but whether it really has anything to do with cheerleading.
"We're doing something new this year," said Jamie Parrish, the team's coach. For no particular reason but to provide visual impact, the 2 1/2-minute performance by his coed "all star" squad will be modeled around a highly conceptual hospital theme. Forget pleated skirts. The girls will wear skimpy white nurses' outfits festooned with red crosses, the boys blue surgeons' scrubs. In place of a martial fight song, the team will cue Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine." As for pompoms, megaphones, and, yes, actual cheers, such vestiges of another age would seem almost risible in this context.
"People are paying $150 a seat in Las Vegas to see the 'O' show at the Bellagio by Cirque du Soleil," said Mr. Parrish, 33. "I'll sit there in the audience and think, 'I see a lot of the tricks they do in my gym every day.' "
Despite the gaudiness of productions like his team's, Mr. Parrish actually considers all this more a sport than a spectacle. He is at the vanguard of a new wave of coaches who are rendering traditionbound cheerleading nearly unrecognizable to those who think it belongs first and foremost on the sidelines of "real" sports.
Indeed, at a time of year when varsity squads are breaking camp in anticipation of the first big gridiron clashes, the greater contest may be playing out within cheerleading itself — a battle for the soul of a quintessentially American institution. The momentum to turn competitive cheerleading into a major sport has grown so strong (even internationally, with talk of putting it in the Olympics) that the purists find themselves leading a new reactionary push, to reinforce the premise that cheerleading must actually involve . . . well, leading cheers. Mr. Parrish — who is a product of the august "spirit program" at the University of South Carolina — owns an independent all-star cheerleading gym, a private clinic with no school affiliations that exists almost exclusively to train flashy acrobatic teams to compete with other such teams. He said that when he opened the gym in Marietta, Ga., in 1991, it was the only one of its kind in the Atlanta area; he now has 17 competitors. Nationally, by one recent count, the number of all-star gyms has exploded, to about 2,500 from around 200, in the last five years.
"The days of Go! Fight! Win! are completely archaic these days," Mr. Parrish said happily.
The split is so stark, in fact, that Mr. Parrish maintains that competitive cheerleading now merits a name unto itself. " `Acroperformance' is what I'd call it," he said.
That is one of the few points on which traditionalists might agree with him.
"Acrocheer . . . cheer stunt . . . team stunt," Jeff Webb, the chairman and president of Varsity Brands of Memphis, was saying, mulling names that might be used to brand, and marginalize, rogue cheerleading, which has suddenly risen as a challenge. Varsity Brands is to spirit what General Motors was to automobiles in the 1950's. The company, which says it has annual revenue of more than $150 million, controls 90 percent of the market in outfitting the nation's estimated 3.5 million cheerleaders. Through subsidiaries that include the Universal Cheerleaders Association and the National Cheerleaders Association, the company also controls the largest camps and the most prestigious competitions for both traditional scholastic cheerleaders and all-stars.
What it doesn't control is the independent all-star gyms and competition companies, which are increasingly eager to move into the mainstream.
For now, a strong overlap remains between scholastic and all-star programs. For many traditional cheerleaders, all-star gyms are merely places to polish skills under highly trained specialist instructors. Some colleges send entire squads to all-star gyms for additional training, to hone them for their one or two big competitions a year.
But increasingly, the competition-only ethic bred in the all-star gyms is beginning to refigure the sport. More than ever, talented young cheerleaders faced with new pressures to develop skills are finding themselves forced to choose.
"A lot of the kids try to straddle both," said Sheila Noone, the editorial director of American Cheerleader Magazine, which is spinning off a new trade publication in September aimed at the all-star market. "But if you have to choose one squad, you go with which is most important, and for a lot of kids, they want to be recognized as athletes, and to do that, they have to win."
Even traditional sideline cheerleading has evolved strikingly, in its choreography and athleticism, since the days when George W. Bush donned a varsity sweater and raised a megaphone at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Even though many squads, particularly at universities, have long performed such elaborate feats as basket catches out of 2-2-1 pyramids, cheerleaders were often considered little more than idealized trophy wives to men's sports programs — conspicuously attractive, charming and well-groomed, but most of all subservient.
That began to change as women redefined many of their traditional roles in the 1970's, and by the Reagan years — seemingly channeling Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic gymnastics star, and even "Flashdance" — cheerleaders were incorporating even more dance, tumbling and stunts into their routines. In fact, it was traditional cheerleaders doing newly stunty routines who first found a national audience as an entertainment franchise. By the early 1980's, ESPN had made collegiate competitions a television staple.
It was the generation weaned on those shows, where cheerleaders themselves were the stars, that began joining all-star gyms in the late 80's, and that ushered in the aggressively showy all-star style that has purists a bit aghast. "A lot of people who come from all-star gyms don't know how to cheer," said Alan Avayou, a coach of the Temple University squad. "That's why we're here.`
Here, in this case, was Rutgers University's Livingston campus in Piscataway, N.J., where the Universal Cheerleaders Association was holding its big four-day East Coast summer camp early this month. The gathering might be considered something of a boot camp, intended to drill some 500 collegiate cheerleaders in the fundamentals: "motions" (the semaphorelike arm gestures they use) and "gameplanning" (managing the morale of 60,000 fans when, say, the home team's quarterback is injured), as well as tumbling, stunt performing and, of course, cheering.
The association's top instructor at the camp, Bill Ahern, is no stranger to cutthroat spirit competition. In the mid-80's, he cheered with the University of Kentucky's powerhouse coed squad, a perennial champion. "Even at the University of Kentucky," he said, "the school is happy with the exposure they get at the competitions, but the real concern is, What are they doing to give us home-field advantage?"
"In the last five years," he added, "we've really had to re-emphasize what a cheerleader is supposed to do." Sometimes, he said, recruits with all-star backgrounds scarcely seem to know, or even to care, which team has the ball.
Mr. Ahern was standing on a sun-drenched football field at Rutgers. Before him, the Villanova squad unfurled a white flag the size of a spinnaker, emblazoned with a bold navy-blue "V." The team from George Mason University in Virginia belted out "Go G.M.!" as one member jumped into a spontaneous standing back handspring, seemingly just because she could. It was purist heaven.
Not that all those present were entirely pure of heart. "I didn't associate myself with cheerleaders," recalled Ebony Halsell, an instructor at the camp and a cheerleader at Western Kentucky University whose only experience was on all-star squads before she got to college. "We didn't do cheers — we did routines to music."
"All-stars wear short skirts and always have our tummies uncovered," she said. "We'd wear glitter and wild makeup. In college, we have to live up to the alumni expectations. It's more conservative. Red lipstick, blush, white bows."
All the flash can help obscure the fact that all-star gyms tend to have an intense, almost Soviet, approach to training. Children ("ankle biters," as they are called) often join the gyms — many of them reinvented gymnastics centers — in kindergarten, and continue up the competitive ladder, level by level, through college and beyond. "Open squads" attract competitors well into their 20's.
The debate over the fundamental mission of cheerleading really began to crackle last year, when the University of Maryland declared women's competitive cheerleading a varsity sport, as defined under the federal Title IX law on gender-equity in school sports. The decision first drew fire from feminists who insisted that high-kicking coeds in tight sweaters should not receive full sport recognition before, say, women's ice-hockey players. Soon, the cheerleading world itself began to fissure. As dozens of other universities explored the possibility of doing the same thing, traditionalists complained that such "cheerleaders" weren't even cheerleaders. Maryland maintained a separate squad to work the sidelines at Terrapins football and basketball games.
The seemingly semantic distinction between "sport" and "activity" has practical, if technical, implications. High school sports teams, for example, are restricted from leaving their home states for competitions. Not so activity squads.
But the greater divide may be cultural. Some who insist on redefining cheerleading as a sport do not equate it with stodgy old things like field hockey. "In a way, I can say that cheerleading has become an extreme sport," said Scott Braasch, president of Cheer Tyme Inc., an all-star center in Lemoyne, Pa., whose teams like to incorporate booming sound effects like jet-fighter whooshes and whip cracks into their routines. "You just watch college nationals — you'll see four people throwing a person 30 feet in the air, girls doing X-out double folds, which are back flips with two twists. You're seeing skills you see people doing off diving boards." Rare is the gym these days that doesn't find some way to co-opt the rebel chic of either vertical skateboarding or hip-hop and work an expression like "X-treme," "Outlaw," or "Starz" into its name.
While many all-star squads strive for an image that at least generally recalls the classic cheerleader (albeit with more skin and glitter), it is emergent competition companies like All Star Challenge of Durham, N.C., which organizes competitions like Battle Under the Big Top, that are suddenly bursting the limits. At its annual Clash of the Titans tournament in March, cheerleaders will spin into their basket catches in front of a 20-foot-tall scale replica of the Parthenon flanked by flaming caldrons and giant heads of Zeus spitting torrents of water.
"To call it cheerleading is almost insulting," said Dennis Worley, a managing director and the chief legal counsel at the company.
And it is this competitive side of cheerleading — perhaps without the flaming caldrons — that suddenly seems to know no bounds, or even national borders. Inspired in part by cable telecasts, a world that remains deeply ambivalent about all things American of late seems oddly willing to snap up the ritualized star-spangled optimism that is cheerleading, which suddenly has become an authentic American cultural export. Think of it as the flip side of the blues.
Malaysia held its first national championships in sport cheerleading three years ago, and it no longer sounds odd to hear that a club team from Chile has battled it out in a world cheerleading competition in Düsseldorf, Germany.
But thoughts of international glory — not to mention strobe lights and stage fog — were far from the mind of Kristine Sibelius, who will be a senior this fall at the University of Virginia, and who paused at the Rutgers camp to reflect on the growing divide in cheerleading. While she calls herself an athlete, she really doesn't care whether cheerleading is considered a full-fledged sport.
"People are getting so wrapped up in doing these difficult maneuvers that they forget why they're there," she said. For her, the essence of cheerleading is standing alongside the gridiron on a golden Saturday afternoon, facing a crowd of 60,000 rabid Cavaliers fans. At that point, she might be on the sidelines, but there's little doubt who's a star of the show.
"I start the cheer, the whole crowd follows," she said with a hint of wonder. "That's my thrill."
East Stroudsburg?
Meow...
No, I wouldn't complain about no photos.
Oh, PLEASE. If they were any good, they'd be gymnasts. They should stick to CHEERING the team during games, hence the name.
Sorry, but my appreciation of cheerleading was warped a long time ago by the films "But I'm a Cheerleader" (Lefty Lesbo propaganda) and "Debbie Does Dallas" (no comment).
Love the pics!
[Ummm...what was the article about?]
I'm sorry - cheerleaders are there to get their teams' fans pumped up - and lead the crowd in cheers.............
DUH.
I love visual impact. The more female legs, thighs, butts and tits the better. Hey, I'm just a 16 year old male trapped in a 53 year old body.
FMCDH(BITS) (i need a dowd post for pictures of CZJ)
Hey, I AM the grassy knoll.. wait a minute..
Umm..
On second thought, I won't complain.
I guess Texas A&M's yell leaders won't be in this competition (thank goodness!). The tea sips in Austin, however, might be another story.
Gig 'em, AGGIES!
If some people have their way, we won't have yell leaders much longer. We already have the A&M "Dance Team" that preforms at all the basketball games. Somehow I have a felling it won't be too long before they replace our Yell Leaders at every type of game.
Now, nobody gives a cr*p about it. Silly gymnastics on the sidelines are at best ignorable. At the worst, it has become a dare-devil show.
Hmmm. What about team gymnatsics with cheers?
...all-star gyms tend to have an intense, almost Soviet, approach to training...
Gee --- I wonder why?
"Gentlemen, Comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep".
--- Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, to the Politburo in Nov 1987.
LOL!
"They were happy to see me! They REALLY were!"
I was never interested in cheerleaders, though I did date a majorette from one of Houston's big high schools. People at the time were more impressed with that than with her Masters.
Get some CheerOff. CheerOff prevents unwanted attacks by those pesky swarms of Cheerleaders! Well you probably want some CheerOn which has the opposite effect.
I have Cheerios for breakfast. Cheerios allow me to decide. Fair and balanced
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