I have heard stories on teen forums about cheerleading squads being mean and snobby! I think a national High School cheerleading law would be a good idea!
Only nice people are allowed to join high school cheer squads!
Any high school cheer squad with a squad of mean snobby girls must have its squad replaced with the nicest girls at their school!
If I ran a high school anyone who wears the uniform of my high school must be nice!
LOL, I am a curmudgeonly mother and I think, along with football, cheerleading is obsolete. It is astounding to me that girls want to do it. In 2017.
This is the parent cafe. Is that where you wanted this post?
“Nice” is very subjective.
… what?
And what bodangles said.
Haha, funniest post of the day!
Cheerleading is such an anachronism. If I went to my local school board and proposed a new student activity whereby good-looking HS girls would be chosen to wear skimpy outfits and dance suggestively at school events, I would be branded a creeper at best and a pedophile at worst!
In our area, in what I perceive as an attempt to legitimize themselves, cheerleading is being re-branded as gymnastics-lite, with competitions and regionals, etc. An acquaintance with experience in this tells me that there are so many cheerleading associations in the US that as long as you have the $$, you can find “nationals” you can compete in, usually wrapped into a trip to Florida.
I’m sorry, but we already have gymnastics as a real sport.
Wow, I have no dog in this fight (my D is not a cheerleader) but I think in many schools cheerleading is the only way that students - both male and female, by the way - are able to continue in gymnastics or dance that they’ve done for years. How many schools can support a gymnastics team? How many parents can continue to pay for the private dance or gymnastic (expensive) private teams once the kids hit high school? From what I’ve seen of the cheerleaders at D’s school, it looks like they put a lot of time and energy into it, and there is an incredible amount of athleticism involved.
Although I have a feminist prejudice that takes a dim view of cheer leading, I have to say that in recent years it seems to have emerged as a sport in its own right, to some extent. The more that the activity is divorced from the attractiveness of the participants, and tied to their athleticism, the better, IMHO.
@suzy100-- but cheerleading is still about the money – teams buy their way to “nationals”. As I stated, if you can afford the trip to Florida (or wherever), you “qualify” for nationals–coaches have told this to me. At least for gymnastics, we have leagues run by the state interscholastic association.
Watch the cheerleading championships that occasionally run on cable tv–some of the teams have routines that are one step away from stripper routines. This is not a sport. Like I said originally, a huge anachronism.
Agree consolation but I noticed at my kids’ school anyway that the requirements were more around enthusiasm and perpetual peppiness than athleticism and gymnastics as there were several chunky cheerleaders so not much jumping, leaps or tossing in the air and they didn’t do dance routines and wear belly bearing tops and I am ok with it although I think they should have guys too like they did back when I was in high school. Seemed more of an extension of the pep band than what you see on tv.
Wow, just wow. The perpetuatuon of misinformation and stereotyping of cheerleaders is astounding.
I do have a student athlete. She has been a competitive cheerleader for 12 years and school cheerleader since middle school. She is the co-captain of her high school varsity team.She practices or is performing anywhere from 10-20 hours a week, year round. She lifts 120 pound girls over her head and is responsible for their safety everday. Performs advanced gymnastic tumbling (standing tucks, combo passes through to a layout) on hard wood gym floors. Learns dance routine in the blink if an eye. She has sacrificed a lot to be a “ambassador” for her high school. She does it all with a smile on her face while she maintains a class rank of 82/575 and has a 4.8 gpa. She is a member of the NHS, NEHS, Rho Kappa, Mu Alpha Theta, SNHS and Latin Club.
I’ll beat she can be mean, on ocassion. Just as mean as the drum major, or president of the chess club. Or maybe even as mean as an anonymous poster, or a dad, on a public forum perpetuating long out dated stereotypes of what a cheerleader looks like, is or does…
@labegg - Congratulations on your daughter’s academic and athletic success. But that must be a crazy grading scale if a 4.8 GPA isn’t in the top 10%!
This feminist mom never imagined her feminist D as a HS cheerleader. D was a competitive soccer player, but in middle school became very interested in dance and ended up as a cheerleader during her freshman year. Most of the girls were nice (a few were not) and many were honor students (like D). Not much different than the girls on the soccer team. As a sophomore she switched to the HS Dance team (which was more difficult to get onto) and was a member for 3 years.
I don’t get the dislike of cheerleading/cheerleaders here.
@MADad - why do you care if someone pays to send their D to an event? Are they asking you to pay?
Some of your comments sound like my neighbor who made snarky remarks about " skimpy uniforms " (not true at our local HS) and “suggestive moves” until his own D made the team a few years later. Oops 
FWIW his D was like mine a top student who is also a feminist. She just enjoys dancing.
I saw this exact post on another forum
What an odd original post.
Let’s extend that “philosophy” or “rule”…
Only nice boys should be allowed into a fraternity.
Only nice boys should be allowed to be President.
This could list could be a mile long…
Let’s first of all work on how we’ll define “nice.” My money says the parents of every girl in the world thinks their daughter is “nice” most of the time.
Now let’s talk about those stories you’ve heard. Have you also heard all the stories of the wonderful things that teens do? Yes, even some of those “snobby” cheerleaders. In my school, they’re involved in a million different things, from hosting a Junior Senior prom at a local nursing home, to tutoring kids at a local elementary school, to collecting food for the needy. You see, once they put down the pompoms, they become regular teenagers. And I’m a big fan of regular teenagers.
Can teenage girls be clique-y (probably not a word, sorry.) Absolutely, with or without pompoms. It’s the nature of the beast, and always has been. Or at least in the 35 years since I started teaching. It’s not about cheerleading, it’s a function of age. I think you’ll find that the girls (AND BOYS) on soccer and debate and Science Olympiad and NHS are every bit as comfortable with their own group of friends, and sometimes less than welcoming to kids they’re not close to.
Gotta wonder why you bothered to start a thread on a college prep forum-- and apparently on multiple forums-- about a topic like this. Most people who are new here post on college related issues.
I think it is dependent of school climate and community. The cheerleaders on the campus I work at are genuinely nice, work hard at their sport, do community sevice and encourage others. But, this is true of a lot of the organizations because we have zero tolerance for bullies in all their forms. Now, on my kids’ campus, the “smart” kids that participate in different sports and activities tend to be intellectual bullies…making it sometimes an unsafe environment in the classroom, on the field, and during other activities. While school admin says there is zero tolerance, I suspect the high affluence way too involved parents sometimes get in the way of school discipline.
When I was in High School the cheer squad was made up of the pretty popular girls. I did not know if they bullied anyone but I did hear things about them saying catty things. Not to be rude but the current cheer squad is more average looking and some are on the heavy side. There were also no guys on the cheer squad when I was in now there are a few.
I welcome this change! If I was in charge of a school I would the people who wear the uniform of my school to be the nicest most moral people in the community!
What do you think of this change?
Why did it change? Different cheer coaches? More pressure from the community for equality?
This is a topic that can’t be generalized. Surely there are programs that are high quality, competitive and respected. Likewise, there are likely programs that are like what we may see in snooty movies on tv.
It’s not an all or nothing.
I mentioned the costs in reply to another poster who said that gymnastics gets expensive, and that cheerleading allows girls to continue in that vein without the high costs. It was a rebuttal to a comment that cheerleading costs little compared to gymnastics.
Not my contention, but someone else’s.
My original point dealt with the anachronistic nature of the whole thing. Doesn’t seem to fit in with today’s world.
I take offense to categorizing my comments as snarky–trying to have serious discussion here.