Anchorage Daily News, Alaska, Heather Lende Column: Save a Cheer for School Cheerleaders

By Heather Lende, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Jan. 18–HAINES — The bleachers in the Karl Ward Gymnasium weren’t full for the first home basketball game of the season. There was also a home swim meet, and the debate team was away, as was the boys’ basketball team. When you have only 105 students, you notice when 19 are missing. You also notice when 19 are cheerleading.

I like basketball games. I like sitting in my regular seat next to the same people who also always sit there, looking across at all the other fans and parents sitting in their usual places. I like listening to a local girl sing the national anthem with Shania Twain style. I like when someone whispers, “She should try out for ‘American Idol,’ ” and someone else, who has been out in the bushes too long, replies, “What’s that?”

I even like the opposing team, the strong and scrappy Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school Lady Braves — especially the girls staying with us. (One’s from Dillingham, the other from Tanana.) In our league, with communities separated by the waters of the Inside Passage, the home team hosts the visiting team for two or three days each weekend, with the boys and girls alternating. So while our girls play Mt. Edgecumbe here, our boys are playing their boys in Sitka. I also like that the mostly Native boarding school still proudly calls its players the Braves.

My mood changed when I noticed half the program was taken up by Haines cheerleaders. There are 19, more teens than are on the combined girls and boys basketball teams. If a few ballplayers on either one fall behind with their schoolwork or get injured, we could be going to the gym Friday and Saturday nights to watch the halftime show.

There are so many cheerleaders that they line up two deep in front of the student section of bleachers.

My generation was the first to benefit from Title IX, the 1972 law that requires schools to offer the same athletic opportunities to girls as boys. In Haines, that resulted in the formation of a girls basketball team, a team that won a state championship in 1985.

Now, more than 30 years after Title IX’s passage, the idea that more girls (17 — two boys help with stunts) prefer shouting “Defense!” to blocking a shot has me stewing. How can we have a woman governor, a woman speaker of the house, a woman space shuttle captain but more Haines girls choosing outfits than uniforms?

I got so distracted by all this that I barely noticed my daughter making a runaway lay-up.

I started to share my concerns with my thoroughly modern friend, Anna, as the cheerleaders did a kind of music video routine in bright blue leotards, when she said, “If they had this when I was in school, I’d be right there. I love to dance.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Anna’s daughter is a 5-foot-10 freshman who has never before played basketball. Anna also housed two Mt. Edgecumbe girls. Her husband, sister, sister’s husband and parents were all at the game to support her daughter.

But she didn’t get to play. She sat on the bench.

Having had a similar experience with my son when he was younger, I could imagine what would happen after the game, when all the cold drinks and warm words won’t dull the pain.

You say, “Well, maybe next time,” or note the starting senior who was on the bench as a freshman. You may also say how proud you are at the way they handle the disappointment. You say all the right things to your child.

But later, in bed, you’ll fume privately to your husband and tell him you can’t stand that they spend hours a day practicing, are barely home for meals, not to mention the days away traveling and lost class time — and then they don’t even get to play in the games.

“How,” you half hiss and half sob, “are you supposed to get better if you never get in a game?”

Your husband sighs. “I agree with you, but that’s not how basketball teams work and not how life always works either.” Then he reminds you that no one is making your child play — it is a choice.

You think that if he says basketball builds character, you may sleep on the couch. Luckily, he doesn’t.

But you still can’t sleep, so you think of the 17 girls and two boys who have chosen to be cheerleaders. And instead of feeling worse, you feel better. It is kind of funny, really. The cheerleaders are all shapes, sizes and aptitudes. Most are earnest beginners. But they all get equal court time and look so happy. (And their parents are probably sleeping soundly by now.)

Then you think of all the teenagers, especially in rural towns, who have such trouble with drugs, sex and alcohol, and you know that if 19 kids want to be cheerleaders, well, that’s a pretty good problem to have. And right then you know that your job as an adult is to stand up and applaud them, loudly and often. And your job as a mother is to hope that the teams in uniforms learn a lesson from the team in outfits.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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