My friends and I would like to welcome Bourne's new cheerleading coach Tara Baker to town!
Coach Tara's mission is to transform Bourne's cheerleading squad into a regional powerhouse. Hey, maybe even national... you don't have to watch many cheerleader movies to understand that a wise man never underestimates cheerleaders.
My contacts at Bourne High School tell me that Bourne once had a championship cheer program, but that cheerleading stalled there over the years.
Cheerleading has traditionally been viewed as more of a hobby than a sport. People tend to ascribe a Queen-style Stomp Stomp CLAP simplicity to cheerleader routines, when the reality is far different.
Girls Sports are vastly underestimated by the general public these days. I do it myself, and a man who actually has looked at numbers all day should know better. A reporter who has evolved past viewing girl's sports as a sort of Pillow Fight is still very capable of answering "Football, wrestling, hockey, maybe lax" when asked to list dangerous high school sports.
In reality, the stats I'm looking at show a top three of Lacrosse, Football and Baseball/Softball. Girls play two of those, and girls even get on the football team now and then. The rest of the top 10 are Gymnastics, Soccer, Hockey, Track/X-country, Swimming/Diving and Basketball. Girls play every one of those sports, and comprise the majority of our gymnasts. If you throw in sports played outside of school, add in bikes, skateboards and trampolines.
It's shocking that Wrestling didn't make the top 10, as the object of Wrestling is to rough somebody up with the Black Widow or whatever they call wrestling moves that aren't on TV. Even more shocking is the fact that Cheerleading ranks 4th on this list.
Depending on the methodology of your stats, Cheerleading ranks higher. If you go by Catastrophic Injury, cheerleading accounts for 65% of injuries to girls in high school sports.
Again, the days of shaking the pom-poms while spelling out the school name are about 35 years in the past up here, maybe further down South where cheerleading is more prominent.
Cheerleaders work in a realm of flips, splits, leaps, catches, throws (you're more likely to get thrown in the air as a cheerleader than as a wrestler) and spins. As near as I can tell, they do their routines on either hardwood, meadow-style grass or- if your school has a football field with the Track lanes circling it- asphalt. The only surface you might survive a fall onto without suffering injury- grass- is pretty much the worst base that you can ask for to do dance/throws on.
Cheerleaders occupy a unique niche in school sports where, while doing their own sport, they can be injured by someone doing a whole other sport nearby. I've seen cheerleaders hit by pucks, run over by linebackers and bonked off the back of the head with a basketball. Only the team that practices near the javelin-throwers are in worse danger from such injury.
So, if you take into account the risk involved, cheerleaders are among the bravest athletes in the school. When you throw in the noble intent of cheering for their school, there is much respect due.
Coach Tara knows all of this. Her girls will know it soon, too.
She will instill a program at Bourne that will make Cheerleaders out of these girls. They will be in great shape. I went to one practice, and they did splits and stretches and more push-ups than I've done in my life. They will drill their moves until they get them right (the best way to lower that injury risk that we led off with), and they will eventually act as One.
The team also has Tara's ex-military husband overseeing the training, so the cheerleaders won't be doing any sloppy push-ups without getting a R. Lee Ermey-style earful. Just kidding, he actually seems very nice.
They are going to need to be in good shape, because Coach Tara plans to have this team at competition level.
She has experience as a national champion cheerleader, and she has been coaching for 20 years. Her teams have won championships with her coaching. Now, she's bringing her talents to Bourne.
The kids deserve a good coach. They formed a cheer squad on their own last year, on a shoestring budget. This year, Bourne High came up with some funds, and the program is off and running. There is talk that the school may ask the girls to cheer for basketball, as well.
The move to bring in Coach Tara is already paying off. For the practice I attended, she brought in a guest speaker. Susan Shannon is the former Director of New England Patriots Cheerleaders from 1979 to 1985. She now works for the New England Professional Cheerleaders Alumni Association, as the President. She spoke to the current Bourne squad about leadership, public speaking, teamwork, confidence, character... basically everything that the Sport of Cheerleading has become.
She spoke of female empowerment and supporting your team, and also about how cheerleaders are athletes with opportunities for college scholarships. Susan spoke to the squad about leading not just your team and each other, but the football team and the crowd, as well. She discussed the importance of getting the crowd behind them. Susan told stories of former cheerleaders who took the skills they learned as a cheerleader and parlayed it into high powered careers.
Susan also discussed the legislative push in the state of Massachusetts to have cheerleading become a recognized sport.... a move that is lonnnnnngggggg overdue.
Bourne is now on the track to have a first-class cheerleading squad. They have a fine teacher and a great bunch of kids. The work of both the coach and the squad will carry on long after they leave Bourne High School, in the form of a solid cheer program that can become the pride of the town.
Three cheers for Coach Tara and the Bourne Cheerleading Squad! Don't forget to peep the Bourne Cheer website! #SeeYouInTheStands #BHS_All_In
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