Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

CHEERLEADING HAS REALLY CHANGED

In high school I was in love with a heavenly cheerleader named Dot. I had gone bonkers over her and thought of her constantly. One time in Algebra she even spoke to me. "Can I borrow a pencil?" she said, but she certainly meant something deeper. Dot got me interested in sports.

Cheerleading was different in the 60's when I went to high school. We'd have a string of girls at our Friday night football games. They shout and scream urging us to cheer and would often lose their own voices in the process. When this line of cheerleaders hollered us into cheering we'd join in, and even the students in the stands lost their voices. Indeed, this was a particular measure of 1960's cheerleader's success -- not just losing their own voices, but how many students also lost their voices.

Had I asked Dottie what her cheerleading job was, she'd have screwed up her cute little pug nose, and look mystified. "Well, to lead cheers, stupid," she'd have replied. That was the primary job of 60's cheerleaders: to lead cheers. The focus was on the audience. They tried to get us to become participants, to cheer the team. They'd urge us to join them in shouting, "Push 'em back; shove 'em back, waaaaaaaaaay back" And we did join! The players (supposedly) heard our concert of cheers and gained new bursts of energy to "fiiiiiiight a little haaaaaaaaarder." The primary job of the 1960's cheerleader was not to be an object d'art or something to watch, but was to get participation.

Cheerleading has changed a lot since then. It is increasingly not about getting the audience to participate... but has become a performance itself. (Not just with the Dallas Cowgirls, but even real cheerleaders.) Cheerleading is something you watch. An exhibition. Our applause is as often directed to the cheerleader's performance as it is to the team's. Indeed, last week I tuned to ESPN2 and watched a full hour exhibition of pure cheerleading with no interruption from an actual game at all. Cheerleading is now a sport in its own right. It is no longer an auxiliary but a main sport. Cheerleading is increasingly something to watch.

And in the process, the goal of cheerleading changed. (Perhaps because of a broader cultural shift?) The primary job of a cheerleader is no longer to get the audience to participate. It is to entertain, perform, and to do the cheering for the audience. And we like it.

Which brings me to the real subject of this article: today's song leaders, praise teams and praise bands...

So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu