This winter, many watching professional basketball and football will see the treasured, all-American cheerleaders performing on the sidelines: shining smiles, bouncy hair pom-poms raised high. Cheerleading has become increasingly intense and athletic, but its portrayal remains largely limited to the sideline cheer that many view as frivolous. The reality is far more complicated: while cheer’s history is entangled with contradiction, scandal and an all-controlling company called Varsity Spirit, the sport is a cherished community for many.
Cheerleading originated from military chants, and was male-only until WWII. After the war, Lawrence Herkimer saw potential in the newly female cheer. He invented the pom-pom and the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA), teaching the beginnings of “stunt” cheerleading. In 1971, Herkimer hired Jeff Webb, who later became the general manager of the NCA.
But in 1974, Webb quit and started the Universal Cheerleader’s Association. He pioneered gravity-defying stunts and founded Varsity Spirit, the umbrella company for what would become a cheer empire.
Today, most scholastic teams start fall performing at basketball or football games, and compete from November until Nationals in February.
Kenzie Richardson is the JV cheer coach at Lakeland High School (LHS) near Tampa, which has won six consecutive Florida state championships and back-to-back nationals. She aims to teach hard work and discipline, both in and outside of cheer.
“We want [athletes] to know that they’re loved, but we also want them to know that we hold them accountable,” Richardson said. Like many coaches, Richardson holds her cheerleaders to high academic standards because of their status as community role models.
Richardson, who cheered at LHS, noted the “leaps and bounds” the program has made. “The team now is so elite, it’s insane,” she said.
Drive for excellence has risen with the team’s success. “We’re a school that’s known for winning. And I think when our team is given that confidence, they just want to work hard for it,” said Morgan Jones, the captain of LHS’s varsity cheer.
During competition season, teams often practice six or seven days a week, rehearsing stunts for hours. Increased practice means increased injury risk: cheerleading has the highest concussion rate during practice after boys’ football and wrestling. Over the past 40 years, cheerleading injuries have outnumbered those for female athletes in all other sports.
Antonia Branco, a cheerleader at Bishop O’Dowd in Oakland, stated that, during competition, injuries on her team eclipse all other sports at her school. Concussions, broken noses and joint problems are common. Richardson shared a story in which she broke her finger by accidentally jamming it into another cheerleader’s leg in a failed stunt during practice. Another time, she bit open a teammate’s chin as she fell, and the girl needed seven stitches.
Many cheerleaders ignore “minor” injuries to avoid throwing off the team. “If your wrist is sore, your ankle isn’t really feeling the greatest, I mean, sometimes we break fingers, and you just kind of have to push through, because with cheer, you don’t really get a fill-in,” Jones said.
photo courtesy of Antonia Branco
Despite the dedication many pour into the sport, cheer is often considered a hobby. “It takes blood, sweat and tears, and you actually have to love what you’re doing. It’s not just about doing dances and throwing your poms around in the air,” Jones said. “People don’t even consider it to be a sport, but sometimes it gets pretty ugly in the practice room with how hard our practices can get. And I think in a perfect world, we would have more breaks and just a little bit more time to breathe, because we don’t really get an off season.”
Additionally, cheer can be a financial burden. By the late 2010s, a typical family spent over $10,000 annually on a single cheerleader.
Emphasis on appearances both in performance and day-to-day presentation can add to financial obligation.
“I honestly think cheer is so expensive,” Colette Smith, who cheered at San Ramón Valley High School, said.“Those uniforms are super expensive. Bows were like, 20 bucks each… and then they want you to have clean, white shoes every day.”
Though Webb is no longer involved today, Brands from Bain Capital for $4.75 billion, which, after six years of turbulence and scandal, seemed to walk away with a substantial payoff.
Varsity has profited from nearly every aspect of the sport: uniforms, competition hotels, camps, choreographers, television channels, and more. This included a regulatory body called the United States All Star Federation that hired former Varsity employees, shared office space with Varsity, overlooked abusive coaches and funneled profit back to Varsity. “They just have their hand in every single pot,” Richardson said.
In recent years, Webb and Varsity have faced a wave of antitrust and personal injury lawsuits. Some point to Varsity practices that swallowed competition; others claim that Webb advocated against cheerleading being recognized as a sport, despite pioneering its modern acrobatics, to protect his influence.
For some cheerleaders, navigating the demanding world of cheer doesn’t feel worth continuing in college, especially given there is no professional stunt.
“I’m just really tired,” Amaya Thoene, a senior at LHS, said. “I love cheer, I do, and I really love stunting, but I don’t particularly want to continue it, because it’s so demanding, and while I enjoy it, I want to be able to have new experiences.”
Still, Thoene protests the “bad rep” she feels cheer gets. The sport has made progress with injury rates decreasing since the 2000s, 36 states also consider cheer a sport and in a recent settlement, Varsity agreed to shrink programs that drive up costs for families. The U.S.A.S.F. has also promised to be run “entirely independently” from Varsity.
photo courtesy of Morgan Jones
For many, cheer is about community. “I genuinely appreciate the sisterhood and the relationships that I built from [cheerleading],” Branco said. “It’s unlike anything else that I’ve ever experienced my whole life, and I’m so grateful.”
Today, over one million children cheer nationwide. They continue to be drawn by the image of the princess-adjacent cheerleader, who, despite her controversies and challenges, remains a cherished representative of America.
“These little girls come up to us at competitions or football games with the brightest eyes ever, saying that they think we’re so cool and that they want a picture with us,” Jones said. “It is probably one of the best feelings, that we can be a leader in these little girls’ lives.”
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