Cheer!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders - Hardcover

Torgovnick, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416535969 ISBN 13: 9781416535966

Publisher: Touchstone, 2008

Synopsis

A behind-the-scenes tour of competitive college cheerleading describes every aspect of the sport from spring tryouts through the NCA Nationals, drawing on the personal experiences of accomplished athletes from three top cheer schools. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Kate Torgovnick is a former associate writer/editor at Jane magazine. She writes about extreme athletes for The New York Times and her articles have also appeared in Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, and The Daily News (New York). She grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Yale of College Cheerleading

The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

Brad Patterson leans back in his chair. On the blue mat in front of him, more than 150 cheerleaders form an ocean of bodies as they practice. Brad crosses his arms over his chest, his baby face out of place on his bulky body. In his purple SFA polo shirt with sunglasses tucked into the open buttons, he appears laidback. But ­he's taking careful mental notes. ­It's the day before tryouts for the Stephen F. Austin cheerleading squad. As head coach, by the end of tomorrow, Brad will have to whittle the 150 people on the mat down to just thirty.

Stephen F. Austin State University is the Yale of college cheerleading. ­They've won their division, Cheer I at NCA Nationals, eight times. Just three weeks ago, they clinched a fourth set of championship rings in a row. In fact, the squad has won every year since ­it's been under ­Brad's direction.

SFA is located in Nacogdoches, Texas, a city that calls itself "The Oldest Town in Texas," although Brad tells me two other cities claim the same thing. As I made the two-­hour drive from Houston, I passed logging truck after logging truck, making it obvious how the school chose the Lumberjack as their mascot. Nacogdoches is small -- a main drag with the university on one side and strip malls on the other. A water tower looms above the town with the letters SFA emblazoned across it in huge purple letters.

Nacogdoches boasts only 30,000 people, but a third of them routinely show up at SFA football games. ­There's enough interest in cheerleading here to warrant two all-­star gyms. But that ­shouldn't be surprising. After all, in Texas, football is often referred to as a religion, and cheerleaders are the high priests.As I watch the SFA hopefuls practice, ­Newton's theory of gravity seems broken -- nearly every woman who goes up stays up. Still, ­Brad's lips are pursed. "This is one of my smaller tryouts," he says in a smooth Southern twang. ­"That's how it is the years we win -- people get intimidated. In the years we ­don't win, they come crawling out of the woodwork."

Brad has recruited many of the people on the mat, scoping them out at competitions and swooping down to suggest that they try out. "At this point, I'm seriously looking at fifteen girls and twenty-­five guys. But my mind can be changed during tryouts -- it always is," he says.

Sierra Jenkins is no doubt one of ­Brad's top picks. Her über-­blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a messy ponytail and a hello, my name isâ??sticker is affixed to her black spandex shorts, dubbing her #48. She hails from Arlington, Texas, and has cheered since elementary school. In the fall, ­she'll be a junior, and she already wears two National Championship rings around her thin fingers. In fact, in the eight years ­she's competed at Nationals with school teams, she has never lost.

Sierra is used to being the best. As a college freshman, she headed to a top cheer college in Hawaii, where she established herself as a standout. But it ­wasn't the idyllic year of waterfall hikes and white sand beaches ­she'd imagined. "I was the biggest girl on the team. I thought I was fine, but my coaches were like, 'You gotta lose weight,'â??" says Sierra, a just-­gargled-­gravel roughness to her voice. "My first few weeks in college, all my dreams and aspirations went down the drain."

Sierra developed an eating disorder that brought her weight down to a scary ninety-­five pounds. Still, she shone on the mat and was even made a captain. But midway through her sophomore year, Sierra realized she needed help. She headed home to Texas.

Back home, she enrolled in a junior college to keep in shape, and her flexibility and energy quickly made her the ­team's star. "I'm always trying to be like, 'Look at me. Look at me,'â??" she says. "My method is just to have more enthusiasm than everyone else. I want to see everyone's eyes going to me."Today, on the mat, Sierra does a Rewind. ­It's a move I first saw at last ­year's Nationals, when a cheerleader explained to me, "Every year, ­there's a move ­that's the move to try. This year, ­it's the One-­Arm Rewind." The name makes complete sense once you see it -- it looks like that old special effects trick where an editor plays the film backwards to make it look like someone is jumping up instead of down.

Sierra stands in front of her partner, her knees bent. His hands are placed on her lower back and she leans back on his wrists. She swings her arms and flips backwards as he grunts and pushes up, like a track and fielder throwing a shot put ball.

Sierra flexes her feet sharply in the air, uncurling her body into a straight line. ­There's a loud smack as her feet land in her ­partner's open palm. Her big, brown eyes widen as she smiles. Her brows swoop in thin arches more fitting to a silent movie star.

Along the walls of the ­women's basketball gymnasium where tryout practice is being held, a mural is painted of women dribbling basketballs. Bleachers run around the perimeter of the room, where a few parents sit, nervously biting their fingernails. Brad admits that parents can be uppity about tryouts. "I'll get phone calls from moms who have kids in the seventh grade. ­They'll ask, 'What would she need to do to make SFA?' I say, 'Call me in five years,'â??" he jokes with a dry delivery.

There is no official agenda for ­today's practice -- the cheerleaders are free to rehearse anything they want in preparation for tomorrow. Brad has asked that the cheerleaders find someone new to try out with, rather than auditioning with a regular partner. All day, guys and girls have walked up to each other asking, "Will you stunt with me?" like ­they're at a middle school dance. By the end of the day, they need to map out the three stunts ­they'll perform at tryouts.

Most of the cheerleaders in the room are hedging the uncertainty by choosing a partner from last ­year's SFA team. "Returners spots are not guaranteed," says Brad. "But ­it's rare that I ­won't take someone back. I pull kids from all over the country, so if someone uprooted their life and moved here, I'm not gonna replace them with someone ­who's just a little bit better."

Yvette Quiñones runs up to the table where Brad sits. Her soft belly pokes forward like a little girl unaware that ­she's supposed to suck in. She is one of the smallest women I've ever seen -- 4'11" and ninety pounds, a stature she attributes to her Mexican heritage. Her pin-­straight hair falls over her rounded cheeks.

Even though she looks young, Yvette will be a senior at SFA. ­She's one of the few returning flyers from last ­year's team, and ­she's already agreed to stunt with four guys at tryouts tomorrow. "I better make captain for this," she jokes, as yet another guy asks to be her partner.

The men flock to Yvette because of her bubbly demeanor and because they assume her small stature will make stunting a breeze. But Yvette knows that ­isn't always true. "Sometimes guys overtoss me since I'm so light. They ­can't control it," she explains. "So if ­it's not working out, I'll tell them, 'I know the perfect girl for you,' and introduce them to someone else."

Yvette strolls back to the mat, and ­Brad's phone rings for the hundredth time today. ­"There's a girl on the way now who had to take the SAT this morning," he says. "According to her mom, ­she's ­God's gift to cheerleading."

Like academic scholars, cheerleaders have specialties. Men can be stunters or tumblers -- a precious few do both well. Occasionally, a woman on a Coed team will be a tumbler, but more often they are flyers. Some flyers are fantastic all-­around, while others concentrate on partner stunting, basket tosses, or pyramids. To decide who makes a team, coaches will often factor in what specialties they are currently lacking.

Looking around the room, I see lots of shirts for Navarro College, Trinity Valley Community College, and Kilgore College -- three junior colleges located within a few hours' drive of Nacogdoches. These teams have become a minor league feeder system for the Lumberjacks; most team members come to SFA after cheering at a junior college for two years. Because cheerleaders generally start at SFA as juniors, many of them stay on extra years. ­It's not uncommon to talk to an SFA cheerleader ­who's in his or her fifth or sixth year as an undergraduate -- some even enroll in grad school primarily to cheer. The scholarship means ­there's no financial burden to staying in school.

"It took me four years after community college because I ­couldn't pick a major," says Trisha O'Connor, the ­squad's assistant coach, a quiet woman in her twenties with long, reddish hair. She insists on calling me ­ma'am even though I am only two years older than her.

Trisha glances at Doug Daigle, whose shaved head and bulging muscles make him look like Mr. Clean squashed down to 5'10". This will be ­Doug's eighth year in college cheerleading. "I graduated in 2003 and started a career as an insurance agent," he explains. "I was making good money, but I ­didn't feel prepared for the real world. So I quit my job, applied to grad school at SFA, and came back. Brad was once my captain -- now ­he's my coach."

"Doug's old as dirt," says Brad, shaking his head.

On the mat, Samantha Frazer talks to her partner from the air. Her eyes are lined in kohl, like a Texas Cleopatra, and everything about her is long, from her arms, to her legs, to her narrow face and its steep nose. "Pick it up, pick it up," Samantha commands as her arm bends. With the determination of an Olympic lifter, he powers her back in the air. "Yay," she says as she lifts her chin and smiles.

When Samantha started two years ago at a junior college, she was only a mediocre stunter. Then she saw SFA for the first time. "I was like, 'What are they on?'â??" she remembers. "They were purebred cheerleaders." Samantha was inspired to join a recreational team with some of them and worked her butt off for the next year and a half to reach their skill level.<...

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1416535969
• ISBN 13: 9781416535966
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384