"Goooooooo Banana Slugs!"... Who doesn't love a lot of Barbie looking women who do moves and flips and just smile all the time? The world could be ending in a hostile U.F.O. takeover but they would still be grinning with those pearly whites. Although that's really not where most eyes go anyhow and come to think of it...... almost every Cheerleader I know aged like crap due to overtanning and are popping happy pills. Hmmmmm, how did this sport get started? Well, loosen your sweatpants cause off we go into Cheerleader World.
Nothing says "Go Team" and Patriotism like this does! Pixabay
The dates vary on when this actually started but the overall ballpark figure is somewhere in the 1800's. Although I think forms of it probably have existed for a long time in various ways. I'm thinking "Gladiator" types who may have done a little dance and thumbs down as people were eaten by Lions....but that's just me.👎
The earliest cheerleaders were not actually poofy haired ladies but were in fact, MEN! Yes, you read that correctly that the sport that started as twinsies with Football was started by men. There is actually a hard time truly pinning down if it started in America or Great Britain. The general consensus is that what evolved into truly modern Cheerleading was started by a super happy guy named Thomas Peebles who was a Princeton Graduate...
As someone who comes from a family of Cheerleaders and was a Cheerleader for a very, very, very ,very short time I've come to loathe the sport while simultaneously being fascinated by it.
We've got spirit yes we do, We've got Spirits , How 'bout you?...As a former Cheerleader for like 5 seconds I can assure you that after practice the spiked stuff got passed around 💄💋👅 giphy
Although most of us visualize Cheerleaders as a group of Gymnastic performing girls/womyn in Pyramids, the facts actually may change the stereotypes. I can tell you that size does matter in this sport and most Cheerleaders that are female actually have Gymnastic experience. In College Cheerleading, about half of all involved in the sport are actually male. A few of my friends were into this and were just much more outgoing and into the status quo then I was. A couple of my own "Bro Squad" were College level male Cheerleaders who also married Cheerleaders. They never seemed to be in a bad mood and I was the "Emo" one who wore a lot of black and had piercings. "To Each Their Own"!
Don't worry Guys, they totally will marry you for your sparkling personality and don't care what you look like or have in your wallet. giphy
Here are a few fun facts...
In the November 2, 1898, football game between Princeton and the University of Minnesota, six male cheerleaders entertained the crowd for the first time. They were led by Johnny Campbell, and this date is considered the birth of cheerleading.
It's reported that Campbell's first cheer was, "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!" This apparently led to the popular "sis boom bah" cheer.
In 1903, the Gamma Sigma fraternity was founded as the first for "cheer leaders."
Women joined cheerleading squads in 1923. During World War II, the shift to mostly female cheer squads began.
George W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, and Franklin Roosevelt were all cheerleaders. Sourced from liveabout.com
