The Joy of Cheerleading
Life has its ups and downs; cheerleading has only ups.
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Nothing has changed cheerleading so much in the last ten years as the incorporation of dance steps, up-tempo rhythms, and phrases from popular songs like “get down,” “do that stuff,” “taking care of business,” and “boogie.” No longer may a cheerleader jump twice in the air and shout, “Hold that line!” No longer may a cheerleading squad base all its routines on stiff, formal steps. The modern cheerleader must also know how to dance. This all started in California. Anyone who has seen the USC or UCLA “songirls” do a routine will understand why certain elements of their style have spread as far as they have. Consequently one afternoon at the clinic is devoted to teaching the cheerleaders certain rudimentary steps, adapted for cheerleading, from the hustle of other disco dances.
Herkie led me down a hallway in Moody Coliseum, which led to the SMU athletic offices, where we hoped, with the cheerleaders’ yells from the basketball floor resounding throughout the building, we could find a quiet place to talk. He is well known in these offices since he has remained a loyal supporter of his alma mater and has donated both money and equipment to the school. After graduating from North Dallas High School, Herkie was cheerleader at SMU in 1947 and 1948, years when SMU, with Kyle Rote and Doak Walker in the backfield, had something to cheer about. During his last year of college, Herkie conducted his first cheerleading clinic. It actually wasn’t his idea but that of a professor at Sam Houston State who enlisted an English professor to teach the cheerleaders diction, a physical education instructor to teach them basic gymnastics, and Herkie to teach cheerleading itself. The clinic, virtually the only one of its kind at the time, attracted a modest number of cheerleaders, but Herkie returned to Dallas convinced that the idea of a cheerleading clinic needed only to be refined. He convinced the professor to let him run the clinic the following summer, where he instituted a number of changes; most important, Herkie replaced the professors on the staff with cheerleaders.
That clinic was a success and Herkie began to set up other ones. He found colleges quite willing to help. For one thing the clinics filled their dorm rooms and cafeterias during the summer when they were normally empty and for another the clinics helped them recruit new students. Cheerleaders then and now tend to be the sort of bright and popular students that most colleges hope to attract. Letting a group of them live on the campus for a week was one way to attract them.
In 1949 Herkie had returned to SMU as a physical education instructor, but by then his clinics had grown to such numbers that by 1951 he had given up teaching and devoted himself to cheerleading. Now, in addition to his summer clinics, he holds numerous one-day or weekend clinics during the rest of the year, and conducts seven gymnastics clinics. He also sells cheerleading supplies and paraphernalia. All this has made him a very wealthy man. In Dallas those who have never been cheerleaders probably know him best for his service between 1973 and 1975 on the Dallas School Board, where he was an arch conservative.
We found an empty office and sat down in the nearest available chairs, which were across the room from one another. “We don’t teach cheers,” he said, “with words like ‘smash ’em, bash ’em’ or words in bad taste. We try to show the squads the really sharp things they can do. They ought to be proud of what they do. You see, cheerleaders have to work as a group. They have to get along together all fall under intense pressure and responsibility. So that’s why we don’t teach just skills but the philosophy of cheerleading, too.”
Herkie has a thick, watery voice and likes to punctuate his sentences with amused little snorts. For someone so successful, he occasionally has an almost bemused air, but more often he projects the radiant good cheer of a lifelong camp counselor. “I used to help with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders back when they really were cheerleaders. Now at their tryouts the girls just get up and shake around a little bit and they choose the ones that shake the best, I guess. Every fall I get calls where someone starts screaming at me, ‘I think it’s just terrible what you’ve done with those Cowboy cheerleaders.’ ‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘I don’t have anything to do with it.’ But that’s different. That’s professional, they’re really just putting on a show. What we’re teaching here at these clinics is all on a pretty high plane.”
When Herkie had to leave I walked back to the arena. The noise of boogie class had been replaced by the lone voice of Dirk Johnston speaking on what makes a good cheerleader. “If you try to be the best cheerleader you can be,” he said, “then you are doing what you can to make the best cheerleader squad. And if everyone on the squad does the best they can, then you will all be doing the most you can for your school. And if everyone in the school…”
The National Cheerleaders Association has 325 instructors on its staff. Two years ago, Herkie told me, he chose the best looking among the applicants and found that, to his way of thinking, he had a staff of prima donnas. “Since then,” he went on, “I’ve tried to choose my staff to give something for everybody. There’s the campus beauty queen, there’s the good old girl that’s homely as a fence post but everybody likes her. There’s the good tumblers, the great jumpers. Something for everybody.”
Actually the staff seemed more homogeneous to me. They were all likeable, right thinking, moderately attractive college kids, and the most remarkable thing about them was that their enthusiasm never faltered from the first moment of the clinic to the last. I asked one of the staff if she ever woke up in the morning and just didn’t feel like cheering. “No,” she said, “not really.” They cheered so long and so hard that all their voices were in need of a rest.
This was most noticeable among the girls, who all spoke with a deep, dry croak that was exactly like a whiskey voice. Contrary to what it might seem, this voice, in the context of all their freshness and zeal, added a worldly note that was rather appealing.
Since members of the staff live in close proximity during the clinics, travel together from one clinic to the next, and try to have some fun when they can, I had supposed that inevitably they would share in moments of extreme fun. But there are fewer of these than one might think. “Staff romances don’t work,” one girl told me. “You’re together for a week. Then you might not see each other again all summer. It’s too hard on everybody.” Also, at the SMU clinic at least half the staff were strongly religious. They read their Bibles during spare moments in their rooms. Several times I saw instructors praying quietly by themselves just before going on stage to perform. Generally, they regard their work as a good summer job. They make about $100 a week to start, get to ravel, meet lots of people, and the kids at the camp regard the staff with the same reverence a high school athlete might have for an all-American.
The kids, of course, thought they were in heaven during the whole week. Their single, universal opinion was that the clinic was “great,” and no matter how many cheerleaders asked, I never failed to get the same reply. My one hope for a different opinion was a boy I’d seen on the first night. He had a sullen, bored expression and sulked through the motions of his cheers. If the instructor insisted that everyone hold his arms straight, this boy made sure his were bent. But by Thursday, when I finally had a chance to talk to him, there’d been an immense transformation. He was cheering with total enthusiasm. “This place,” he said to me, “is just great.”
The clinic had no real ending. Whatever is not serious doesn’t end. Instead it drifts away or peters out or slowly evaporates because anything definite and important enough to be an ending would also be serious. The final competition was held on Friday morning in Moody Coliseum. The squads from R.L. Turner of Carrollton and from Richardson were declared co-winners. My own favorite had been the squad from San Antonio Central Catholic, whose team name was not the tigers, warriors, rebels, bears, or pirates, but the buttons. Then there were a few minor announcements before the staff shouted, “That’s it. Bye, everybody.” No last cheer, no holding hands and singing, no moment of silence. Instead the cheerleaders, now with no one to lead them, milled around aimlessly for a moment and then began to leave the coliseum to pack for the trip home. One girl game running up to me. “Be sure to mention my name in your story,” she said.
“All right, what’s your name?”
And her reply seems as good an epitaph as any for the 1977 SMU cheerleading clinic: “Cindy Arnold, Spring Wood High School, Houston, Texas.”
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