Cheerleading

I have always craved attention. An amateur psychologist might say that I felt ignored because I was the third child in our family. I needed a lot of attention and would go anywhere to find it. For example, even today I update Facebook every morning and obsess over how many “likes” that I get on my posts. Back in high school, I read the morning announcements and was an actor in the theater. When I was a counselor at Camp Tall Trees, I loved to tell the campfire story and lead the kids in song. But the most blatant example of me looking for the attention of my peers was when I became a cheerleader in high school and college.

The year was 1978 and my sister had decided to run for homecoming queen at Eastern Kentucky University. She won first runner up that year but what I remember was that she got to ride in a convertible down the main street of Richmond, the heart of E.K.U. One part of that parade was a group of cheerleaders who were screaming their lungs out while riding on top of a fire engine. The girls were so pretty and the guys looked like they were having so much fun that I remember thinking to myself, “I want to become a cheerleader, too!”

My first stint as a cheerleader came in 1979 at Trinity High School only we didn’t call ourselves cheerleaders; we were the Yell Team because it sounded a lot more masculine. We were at an all boy school and looking manly was important to us. What was great about being on the Yell Team was that we got to be on the field during the football games at Cardinal Stadium. Karen Spears was my partner and my job was to stand behind her and clap a lot. The guys on the squad didn’t know any gymnastics, and we didn’t do any stunts, but it was still fun to cheer in front of thousands of people. I remember a lot of campers from Tall Trees came to the rail to get my attention during the football games and the girl that I was dating at the time thought that it was cool to have a boyfriend who was a cheerleader.

In 1980 I attended Xavier University and thought that the best way for me to become socially active was to become a cheerleader. When I tried out for the squad, no one was more surprised than I was that I had made the team. The best part of being a cheerleader at Xavier was the road trips. We travelled to DePaul in Chicago and stayed in their dorm rooms over break. Our game was in the evening so we spent a day in downtown Chicago. I remember looking out of the bus at staring at all of the high-rise buildings, one after another, and I whispered to myself, “Gosh!” with my mouth agape. Loraine said, while laughing at me, “you have never been in a big city before, have you, Jeff?” I must have looked like a rube, gawking out of the window with my eyes open as wide as saucers. While we were in the downtown area, we did a cheerleader pyramid in front of the old water tower building. It was all in good fun as we were so excited to be in the big city to cheer on the Musketeer basketball team.

The other big road trip that we took was when the Xavier Musketeers took on the Evansville Aces. The Aces were a powerhouse in the 1970s but they were also known for a tragedy. Three years before I travelled with my team to southern Indiana, the University of Evansville Aces basketball team suffered a calamity when the plane that was carrying the basketball team crashed and all 29 people on board died. A memorial, built in the shape of a weeping basketball, had just been built in the middle of the campus. It was a somber reminder of what the university had just been through, but the tragedy had made their basketball program even stronger.

Emotions ran high as the Aces played to sold out crowds. The Musketeers were their first home game of the season and I had never seen anything like the preshow that the Purple Aces put on. They turned off all the lights in the arena and then shone a spotlight on Mr. Ace, the team mascot, who drove a mini-car around the court. When the floor was cleared, the announcer introduced each player and the spotlight shone on the him when the player’s name was called. The crowd yelled “Aces! Aces!” after the introductions were made and I thought that the arena walls would come tumbling down because the whole place seemed to shake with noise and excitement. Streamers and glitter fell from the ceiling at the end of the program. It was quite a show.

The Evansville cheerleaders put up the Xavier cheerleaders in their dorm rooms for the weekend. One of the girls threw a party for us at her parent’s house after the Saturday night game. The family had made a lot of money off coal and their father had the resources to build in an indoor pool and a billiards room with a television and VCR. This was in 1980 and, back then, very few people had a VCR in their house. I remember being so impressed that I could watch “Alien” or any other movie, whenever I wanted, when previously I would have to go to a theater to watch a full-length film without commercial interruption.

I was the youngest one on the squad and was intimidated by the cheerleaders, most of whom were two years older than I was. Usually two years doesn’t mean that much but there is a wide gulf between a freshman in college and a junior in college. They were adults and I was just a kid. In addition, Xavier attracted the best and the brightest and these ambitious people were going to be something someday. Playing against type, these cheerleaders didn’t party on the road trips but instead studied their textbooks on the team bus.

Tom Burkhardt was our captain. He was a short man, built like a refrigerator, and was attending Xavier on a ROTC scholarship. He openly declared his love for Lorraine, a beautiful cheerleader and pre-med student who was way out of his league. She was wicked smart, had long blond hair, and Tom’s crush was so deep that he often referred to Lorraine as “a goddess.” Tom’s buddy on the squad was Steve Kaitenowski and the two couldn’t be more different. Where Tom was hyper active, constantly spitting out his opinions on politics or sports, Steve was laid back and would calmly say, “Okay, Tom” when his buddy got too fired up. The two guys traded barbs with each other but as different as they were, I could tell that they really liked each other.

Jennifer was a little Italian ball of fire, with long black hair and an athletic physique, and she was madly in love with Chris Groefer, the rakishly handsome pre-med student. Maloo was a tiny little girl from the Philippines who was our flyer. She partnered with Tom, who was as strong as an ox, and those two turned out to be the best on our squad because Tom could toss Maloo high in the air to do many great tricks. On one long road trip, Maloo fell asleep on my shoulder when she was done studying in the bus. It wasn’t about romance, it was one friend being comfortable enough around another friend to let her guard down. She felt safe and I felt like I belonged.

My partner on the squad was Andrea Tryba. She was a popular freshman but was too tall and too heavy to be a cheerleader but she brimmed with confidence, and that made up for a lot. The problem was that I could barely pick her up at the beginning of the season and, when Andrea gained the ‘Freshman Fifteen’ pounds, I couldn’t pick her up at all. I was already strong but began to lift weights in earnest to build the muscles need to lift Andrea off the ground. On our last road trip, the whole squad went out to a bar and I was so frustrated at my inability to do any tricks with Andrea that I called her a heifer. She was a city girl who had never left Chicago, so Andrea didn’t know what a heifer was, but she glared at me with rage in her eyes when Tom told her that a heifer was a female cow. To this day, I feel badly about hurting her feelings. Andrea barely spoke to me for the rest of the year and didn’t try out at all for our sophomore year.

One of my regrets is that I only cheered for Xavier for a year. I was frustrated, tired of the politicking and gossip, and just wanted to play rugby. If I had the chance to do it all over again then I would have stayed at Xavier and cheered for all four years. Instead, after two academically and socially frustrating years, I transferred to Bellarmine University, and thought that I could meet a lot of people quickly by becoming a cheerleader again.

It just wasn’t the same. Where we didn’t take ourselves too seriously at Trinity, and at Xavier we were professionals; Bellarmine was somewhere in between those two opposite poles. Since I was a transfer student, it was clear that I would have to find my own way to fit in because the others had already established their friendships. Most of the guys were in ADG together and the girls were in the Little Sisters program associated with that fraternity. Also, there wasn’t a lot of leadership on our squad. Marilyn was our sponsor but wasn’t a coach. We had a team captain but he was more of the problem than the solution. The whole situation stank of amateurism and I longed to go back to Xavier where the squad took cheerleading seriously and we had a good coach. After a single season on the Bellarmine squad, I stopped cheerleading all together, finding it much more gratifying to work at a part time job and earn some money.



Trinity Yell Team: Steve Tompkins, Matt Higgins, Mike Higgins, David Hobbs, Brigid Sheridan, Jill Joseph. Karen Spears was my partner and our sponsor was Mr. Spitzer

Xavier Cheerleaders: Steve Kaitenowski, Steve Johnson, Tom Burkhardt, Tim Beno, Julie, Lorraine, Jennifer, Edie, Maloo. Andrea Tryba was my partner and our coach was Chad

Bellarmine Cheerleaders: Mike Epperson and Suzanne, Jack Horn and Susan, Rick Olgine and Lisa Young, Doug Strothman and Doris Swenson, Paul Garner and Brigid Sheridan, David and Mary. Helen was my partner and our sponsor was Marilyn.