The Milan News-Leader
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Here's to Cheer
Jerry Hinnen
PUBLISHED: February 21, 2008
As a lifelong notoriously picky eater — seriously, it's not my fault God made broccoli taste so awful — I've made it a point to keep an open mind about trying new experiences that don't involve increasing my intake of beta carotene, or whatever.
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Which is why I was excited about last week's Saline Cheer Invitational. Saline's competitive cheer team is in its second year of existence, this was its second time playing host to a competition and the first time in my life I was going to see competitive cheer in person.
Since I figure the overwhelming majority of my readers haven't seen competitive cheer in person either, here are some observations from the Invite to give you a sense of what it was like:
• Competitive cheer consists of three rounds: Round 1 is the "flat cheer" round, 2 the "skills" round and 3 the "combination" round, with each team getting a score for each performance. Highest total score wins.
As it turns out, not having to worry as much about doing back handsprings or lifts in Round 1 helps unleash a cheer team's inner rock star — that round was all-caps LOUD, particularlythe large team from North Farmington. Competitive cheer doesn't use megaphones, and it's easy to see why; these girls don't need them.
• Before each cheer team takes the large mat where they perform, they huddle off to the side and get fired up by, um, doing a cheer. Not one of the heavily choreographed routines they do on the mat, which are akin to a halftime routine, but something like they would chant in their sideline duties at a football or basketball game. They're cheerleaders cheering for themselves to help them cheer better. Yes, it's more than a bit ironic if you ask me.
I think it would be a better idea to find a few football players who aren't busy and let them do the pre-performance cheer. It's only fair and fun for everyone, right?
• As the first round scores are written up on the scoreboard outside the gym where the competition is taking place, it occurs to me that competitive cheer might be considered the ultimate team sport: there's no way to track an individual performance. The team gets three scores as a whole and those are the only numbers that even exist in the sport. No yards or touchdowns, no individual points, no goals or assists. There's no amalgamation of individual performances a la track or golf or swim.
I haven't been able to think of another sport at the high school level where this is the case. Everyone either succeeds together or fails together, no ifs, ands, buts, or "scored 24 points in a losing effort." And that's pretty cool.
l The commemorative T-shirts Saline is selling for the occasion are hot pink and on the back say "Cheer your" with a heart underneath with the word "Out" in the middle. (Get it?) My honest initial reaction is, "Well, gee, couldn't maybe they have chosen a design less stereotypical for an all-girl sport than hot pink and hearts?" And then I realized that many, many of the young girls in the audience were wearing said shirts. Ka-ching! Fund-raising beats silly grad-school liberal objections every time.
l I seriously doubt that anyone who might not consider competitive cheer a sport would hold the same opinion by the time the competition is done. There's no way to pull off all the back handsprings, tumbling passes, the variety of crazy lifts (often coming in cheerleader-goes-up-comes down-goes back up succession, moves that look like pure hell on the liftee's knees and must take hours of work to perfect) without athletic ability.
And by Round 3 — where Saline really pulls things together and is clearly sharper than its competitors — it's obvious that while the finer points of judging are going to be lost on the layman, there's enough difference in the quality of a routine that it's not arbitrary, either.
Yeah, it's a sport.
l After the meet and while the judges tabulate the final scores, all four teams in attendance join up to form a huge circle in the middle of the mat. Then everyone starts clapping and singing a song I can't understand while a few girls do a crazy dance in the center of the circle, then each of those girls exchanges a place with a girls in the circle, creating a clapping-singing-dancing cycle that goes on for a good five minutes.
I guess it's the competitive cheer version of the post-game handshake. Somehow I don't think it's going to catch on with the basketball and wrestling teams of the world, but it looks fun and it seems a nice way to wrap things up.
As for me, well, I'll bring either a friend or a magazine to help tide me over during the 15-minute breaks between rounds next time, but I certainly don't mind saying there's going to be a "next time." See you next year, cheer.
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