Cheerleaders at girls games

Now, pep bands ... I can't recall the last time I saw a high school basketball game with a pep band.

"Stick it in their ear!

"Stick it in their eye!

"Stick it ... in their other ear!"

 

Quick story here from Saturday.

The game was Chester at Harrisburg, two of the better programs in the Mid-Atlantic this year. Packed house. Lots of electricity.

After the teams do their early warmups and go in for final preparation, we're left with the cheerleaders for both schools on their respective end lines. And we have ourselves a good, old-fashioned cheer-down.

The Harrisburg cheerleaders do a hard, rhythmic step-off in the direction of the Chester cheerleaders, ending about 10 feet in front of them with a loud 12-girl stomp. And they go back behind their basket.

The Chester cheerleaders come back, do it twice as hard ... and end with all 12 cheerleaders, in perfect lockstep, landing on the floor in a flying split right in front of the Harrisburg girls.

The whole place gasped. It was fantastic.

 

Stick it in their ear, stick it in their rear!

Stick it in their eye, see if they like pie!

 

That sounds pretty cool.

 

So, they got served?

 

The shit was down.

 

Same here. I didn't realize it was an issue.

 

A few years ago, according to one of our readers (I'll let you guess what sport his kid played), Title IX demands that we give equal coverage to girls' ice hockey and boys' ice hockey -- despite the fact there are four girls' ice hockey teams and 20 boys' ice hockey teams.

 

A random smattering of thoughts:

* Where I am, they cheer at boys and girls games equally. I tend to blot them out. They're irritating.

* If it's an equal access issue, then in theory couldn't any and all sanctioned teams demand a squad at their games? If so, you'll either have cheerleaders who spend 100 hours a week cheering at lacrosse, golf and sailing, or you'll have a cheer team in the hundreds. THEN you have to figure out how to divy up the assignments so that the top cheerleaders and the also-rans have an equal number of football games and fencing meets, if quality of competitions attended becomes an issue, as was brought up earlier in the thread.

* The other thing is that it sounds like a Title IX issue in spirit, but is it in the letter of the law? If we insist that equal sports get equal consideration for cheerleading or pep bands, does that mean that someone can apply it elsewhere? Say the men's basketball team goes to the Maui Invitational. Does that mean the women have to go to Hawaii for a tournament? Does it have to be in the same season?

* A tangent: is it weird for girls to cheer for other girls, given the traditional dynamic of the cheerleader-athlete relationship? Also, I thought maybe this had something to do with only having boy cheerleaders at girls games.

* In 10-20 years, I predict competition cheerleading will be recoginized universally as a sport, and sideline cheer as an activity. One's a sport (at least by the same standards that makes gymnastics a sport), the other's an activity, since nobody scores until at LEAST the locker room.

 

MM: this is not in the letter of Title IX as originally written, but is in the letter of case law and legal interpretations from the Office of Civil Rights, which is the government office charged with Title IX enforcement.

EStreet: Title IX does not apply to media (though the case can be made that it applies to school-sponsored media, like the student paper). Media outlets are not educational institutions which accept federal funding. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is sadly misinformed.

Though I do support a newsroom argument of giving equal coverage: if each of the 20 boys' hockey teams gets four inches each week (or whatever), then each of the four girls' teams should get four inches. It's not like you have to give the girls 80 inches. Obviously different circumstances (i.e. playoffs, undefeated team, etc.) warrant different coverage, but for the day-to-day coverage, it won't hurt to give equal attention.

 

I know that and everyone I work with knows that. We had explain that to the girls' ice hockey parent. Plus, if the girls' coaches don't call in their games half the time, we can't give them equal coverage.

 

Here's another great new-age spelling and although you'll think it's a joke, it isn't.

A friend of mine is a teacher in the public schools here, and she has a student whose name is pronounced Shuh-theed, but spelled (I kid you not) Shithead. Now as to the spelling, I don't know if you'd want to call that new-age or just dumb-fuck.