One writer reports from the trenches of spirit
by JAY SHENAI
photos by CHRISTIN ROSE PALAZZOLO
It’s game day, and the University of Oregon cheer squad walks the court at the Spokane Arena in Washington for the Midwest Regional of the 2007 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Mentally, squad members go over their moves — moves they have performed repeatedly for years. By noon they will bring thousands to their feet in a deafening roar. As rabid Duck fans pour into the arena, cheer member and international business student Eri Yangawa channels the hopes and dreams of an entire campus and community for the last time. Friends and families watch on television as the game is broadcast live to millions nationwide. The stakes cannot be higher: Win or go home.
Above: Cheerleading hopefuls perform during the 2007 Oregon Cheer Squad tryouts. Below: University of Oregon cheerleader Valorie Darling leads the crowd during an October 2006 football game.
Yanagawa’s uniform is on, and her hair and makeup are complete. The crowd screams in joyous roar as she and the rest of the cheer squad take the floor before the 11:50 a.m. tip-off for the first game of the day. “You’re there for the team,” Yanagawa says. “You’re there for the crowd. Definitely that switch comes on.”
In that moment, running alongside the team and shouting into the stands, she becomes the essence of college sports — the bond between athlete and fan personified. She becomes a staple of Americana: She becomes a cheerleader.
On February 19, 2007, Proformance Sports Marketing and Entertainment (PSME), a sports-related advertising and public relations agency, issued a press release from its headquarters in Austin, Texas announcing plans to open the nation’s first cheerleading hall of fame within the year. The next day in an interview on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Cindy Villarreal-Hughes, president of the PSME and former cheerleader with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, called cheerleading “a heritage that has been built up over a hundred years.” She evoked the memory of Lawrence “Herkie” Herkimer, a University of Minnesota student she called the “granddaddy” of cheerleading. Herkimer helped launch the institution of cheerleading in 1949 and turned it into what we see at sporting events today. Villarreal-Hughes also pointed to Thomas Peebles, who at a Princeton University football game in 1884 faced the bleachers and led the crowd in the very first chant, the now-famous “sis-boom-bah.” By building a museum dedicated to cheer, she said she would not only “honor that heritage” but also “bring back the greatness and exceptional performance that cheerleading has been known for.”
She becomes the essence of college sports — the bond between athlete and fan personified.
Today cheerleading is known as a series of comedic portrayals in movies and television shows, such as that of Kirsten Dunst in Bring it On, Justin Long in Dodgeball, or Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri in their recurring “Spartan Cheer” sketches on Saturday Night Live. In recent years individual cheerleaders have also gained negative public attention through scandal. In December 2006, the quiet suburbs of Dallas, Texas, were shocked by allegations of gross misconduct and lawless behavior within the North McKinney High School cheer squad. Suggestive photos posted by several of the cheerleaders on MySpace led to revelations that members of the squad, including the daughter of the school’s principal, had created a malevolent gang similar to the antagonists in the movie Mean Girls. A year earlier, two members of the NFL Carolina Panthers’ cheerleading squad made international headlines after being arrested for an incident in a Tampa, Florida, nightclub. These events reinforce stereotypes of cheerleaders as elitist snobs and drama queens but do not reflect the joy of cheer for those like Yanagawa.
“[Cheer] was such a great experience for me,” Yanagawa says. “It’s been a big part of my life. It’s my passion.”
On March 18, the Oregon Ducks took on the Winthrop Eagles in the second round of the Midwest Regional. It was the highest the team had reached in the tournament since 2003; this would also be the final performance for Yanagawa. As the diminutive senior and dance team captain stepped out courtside, she prepared to fire up the duck fans who had traveled more than 450 miles to see the game. While dealing with the same uncertainty of most graduating seniors, Yanagawa faced the emotions of leaving the Oregon court, her teammates, and friends behind. Pushing aside both the team’s past losses and her current worries, she focused on the one thing that mattered at game time: spirit. “Getting to the arena and then practice, getting my game-face on — this is my job,” says Yanagawa. “I need to do my job and be professional.”
“We are there to entertain,” says Oregon Cheer Coach Laraine Raish. “We are there to create positive spirit in any way that we can. Cheerleaders are crowd leaders, and that’s what I am really hoping to carry on. If we are responsible for one point in our favor, then we’ve done our job.”
But with the rise of year-round all-ages cheer and dance programs, national competitions such as the Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA) and College Cheerleading Nationals, as well as coverage of such competitions on ESPN, being a cheerleader is evolving into something even more intense. The days of the “sally rallies,” demure girls in beehive hairdos, varsity letters, and pompons are gone. The stereotype of cheer teams as primarily social cliques is also disappearing. In their place are highly athletic, skilled gymnasts, and polished, gifted dancers with years of training and regimented discipline. With more than three million people in the United States counted as cheerleaders by various cheer organizations, it is a popular and highly sought-after activity. And for a program like Oregon’s, fresh from its exposure on national television, the competition to make the team gets fiercer.
The days of the "sally rallies," demure girls in beehive hairdos, varsity letters, and pompons are gone.
On a sunny April afternoon, roughly a hundred young women gather underneath the basket at the University of Oregon’s McArthur Court on the first day of Oregon Cheer Squad tryouts. Many of them are from the Eugene, Springfield, and Portland areas; others hail from towns in California and Washington. Some traveled as far as Colorado, Minnesota, and even Hawaii for the chance to experience what cheer squad co-captain Erin Burris refers to as “cheering at the Division I, PAC-10 level.” With tryout numbers tagged on their left hips, clusters of comfortable peer groups brace themselves against the unfamiliarity of the crowd and the emptiness of the court. As tryouts progress, some stand alone with exuberance, wide smiles, crisp body movements, and tossed hair that cascades onto their faces. This exuberance belies the reality that they all know in their hearts — they are far more likely to be cut than to make the team. Only forty-two students will be on the team, including fifteen male stunters. New applicants compete alongside first-year veterans who must regain their spots on the team. They wear their official team gear and share inside jokes with teammates. Despite the odds, new dancers, fueled by hope, strut their stuff and hit their spots.
