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 A
Brief History of Cheerleading
By Lisa M. Browder
It would seem that cheerleading has been around forever. In a way,
that’s true but the changes from its primitive beginnings
have been mammoth. Once comprised of a few unorganized individuals,
cheerleading today is a competitive industry of thousands. It all
started with the Olympic games in ancient Greece where enthusiastic
spectators cheered for their favorite runners. This type of support
– individuals yelling at random as the mood hit– didn’t
change much for centuries. Then around 1884, the creation of the
first pep rally cheer at Princeton University started the forward
momentum. That first cheer went something like this:
“Rah rah rah
Tiger tiger tiger
Sis sis sis
Boom boom boom
Aaahhh!
Princeton! Princeton! Princeton!”
 Although
a good start, it didn’t carry over from the pep rally to the
game for a few more years. One of Princeton’s alumni, Thomas
Peebles, moved to the University of Minnesota and in addition to
taking along that first pep rally cheer, he also created a college
“fight song.” However, it was Johnny Campbell, a first-year
medical student, who led the initial organized cheer at a game in
1898. The inspiration to jump out in front of the bleachers came
from two sources: a student letter and a professor’s response.
A fan had written to the school newspaper to complain that the losing
team would start winning if it had the backing of the fans. One
of the university’s professors took this statement one step
further and declared that the collective stimuli of hundreds of
students, focused on sending positive energy, would turn the tide
of their losing streak. Johnny latched on to the theory and moved
the cheers to the game. His example filtered to other campuses,
paving the way for bigger changes.
In the fall of 1919, as the story goes, Mr. Shirley Windsor (yep
– Mr. Shirley Windsor) was part of a three-man
cheering squad. He figured that the key to successful cheerleading
lay in the amount of spectators available to
participate at the game, so the object must be to expand the crowds.
What would that take? He reasoned that a
huge stadium would attract large crowds who woulddemand good football
teams with better players and this would result in more attention
for the school. He roused 4,000 students at a pep rally and raised
nearly a quarter of a million dollars from students’ pledges
to help build that huge stadium – 30,000 seats.
Cheerleading was now a recognized force in schools. As Willis Bugbee
wrote in 1927, “The cheerleader, where once was merely tolerated,
is now a person of real estate. His prestige is such that at many
schools and colleges he must win his place in competitive examination.”
No longer haphazardly organized, competition had emerged. ”
“Yell leaders” in the 1930’s began to use megaphones,
drums and noisemakers to heighten the excitement. reports have it
that this was also the genesis of the pom-pom (originally made entirely
of paper). Although the pom-pom was here to stay, it was another
thirty years (1965) before Fred Gastoff’s invention of the
vinyl pom.
Then came World War I and men left to fight. Women took over in
cheerleading and began to dominate the
sport. In fact, when Laurence “Herkie” Herkimer founded
the spirit industry and organized the first cheerleader
camp at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas in 1948,
52 girls attended it. Taught fundamental cheerleading skills, the
camp was the precursor to the powerful organizations to come. Throughout
the next two decades and into the 70s, the sport branched out to
support wrestling, track and swimming, in addition to the well-established
football and basketball. The expansion of cheerleading inevitably
attracted the attention of television producers and 1978, the International
Cheerleading Foundation initiated the first nationwide broadcast
of the Collegiate Cheerleading Championships.
By now, it was evident that the elevated skill levels being demonstrated
in gymnastics, partner stunts, pyramids and advanced jumps needed
uniformity to balance the competitive field. It’s hard to
imagine, but it was not until the 1980’s that standards for
competition were set.
Since then, cheerleading has become so popular that it has branched
off to include more women’s sports (basketball and volleyball)
and has resulted in training camps for faculty sponsors and coaches.
Cheerleading promotes community service projects and has been recognized
by the media as an important way to promote enthusiastic, positive
attitudes and school spirit. It’s been quite a journey from
Thomas Peebles’ humble pep rally cheer to the competitive
industry that exists today but make no mistake - cheerleading’s
popularity continues to roar.
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