Competitive Cheerleading

 It all begins innocently enough. Your child talks about going to the local gym to take some tumbling classes. Before long, she takes notice of the group of cheerleaders running through their routines on the other side of the facility. Their skill and coordination make such an impression on her that she expresses interest in how one might go about joining their ranks.

Before you know it, you or your spouse find yourselves at a parent meeting, surrounded by championship banners, and it dawns on you that the tumbling classes were just a gateway drug. What started with a casual back-handspring tutorial will ultimately lead to a moment where you, along with your spouse and daughter, are walking through a railway in downtown Atlanta at 5:30 AM in the pouring rain because you are too cheap to pay $35 for an Uber to take you three-quarters of a mile to the Georgia World Congress Center.

If you are as fortunate as we were, your guide to this brave new world is a highly-organized veteran of the competitive cheer scene patient enough to answer the questions of people whose only experience is with swim meets and robotics tournaments.

Commitment is emphasized, high-pony tutorials are given and overly bedazzled clothing and accessories are acquired. It is explained that your child will be participating in hours of practice several days each week. Their attendance (barring a well-documented industrial accident) is mandatory which makes sense as your child will be responsible for catching someone else’s.

Like any competitive pursuit, cheerleading has its own lexicon and traditions.

At our first competition (known as “comps” on the street), I had placed our cheer backpack on the ground next to me. Ostensibly, the cheer backpack allows the athlete to carry their aesthetic arsenal of makeup, hair products, bow container, snacks and tactical-grade caboodles. In reality, the backpack will spend most of the time being schlepped around by the parent. Which is why, on this particular occasion, it also contained my Kindle.

So when a group of young ladies began casing the bag as they walked by, I continually moved by bag closer and closer to me. Those entry fees are no joke and I wasn’t taking a chance on felony sparkles and the gang fencing my gear. Only later was it explained to me that one of the traditions is for the athletes to decorate clothes pins and clandestinely attach them to the backpack, hair, coat or portable oxygen tank of other attendees. Getting “pinned” was a right of passage and a bonding experience.

Then, while the three of us were sitting at a table waiting for her team to begin warmups, a competitor looked at my daughter and said “I hope you hit zero!” before smiling as she walked away. Unbelievable. Our first competition and this little glitter-hussy is throwing shade at my baby girl. I stopped just shy of yelling “Your mom hit zero….developmental milestones!!” before it was explained to me that this was sincere encouragement. To “hit zero” is to have no deductions for mistakes during your performance.

This spirit of comradery permeated all of our interactions with other teams, parents and coaches. This was a welcome change from other kid’s sports where parental frustration can lead to verbal or even physical altercations. Not once did I witness an enraged parent yelling comically-specific cheer insults like, “Your kid wouldn’t recognize a pike if she pulled one from the lake!” or “That ponytail has more flyaways than a pilot’s resume!”

The atmosphere was incredibly supportive and most parents wore “cheer gear” in solidarity with their team. One glaring exception was the gentleman in front of us at a Nashville event whose hoodie identified him as a card-carrying “Panty Dropper” complete with a crude illustration. I marveled at the thought process that led to this moment. Perhaps this was the least offensive garment he possessed?

This brings me to the scoring. I have attended multiple cheer events produced by several organizations and I still have no idea how the scoring works.

From what I can gather, there is an arbitrary base score which appears to be unrelated to the difficulty of the routine elements. For instance, at the nationals each team was given 46 base points on a 100-point scale. Points could then be added or deducted by the judges at the high table based on crowd interaction, synchronization, execution, sportsmanship or any other number of subjective factors. There may have even been an undisclosed “rizz-multiplier” involved.

Furthermore, each team is classified by level, division, size and a few other characteristics to the point that I rarely knew who we were competing against. I would find myself trying to mentally parse “Level 2.1 Division 3 Mini Prep Co-ed Anemic All Stars” and decide whether or not I should hope someone tripped. This would also lead to large events where you might be the only team in your particular sub-genus.

The intonation of the event announcers ranged from beauty pageant to tractor pull (the latter making it delightful when a team like the Carolina Cuddle-Sparks was announced). Several of the events even had their own mascots. One looked like result of an unholy union between the Phillies mascot and a decommissioned Fraggle Rock character while another appeared to be inspired by the Abominable snowman despite the event taking place in Florida.

Security and ticketing also varied wildly from venue to venue. Some events featured metal detectors and TSA bag-searches while others were lax enough that you could roll in a cooler of human organs and weapons-grade plutonium without scrutiny. Tickets could be as high as $75 per adult for two-day competitions. Which, as it turned out, was the cheapest aspect of this enterprise.

Many of the overnight competitions required a booking at a hotel chosen by the event and each and every one of them was well-aware they had a captive audience. Most were valet-only and one charged up to $60 per day just to park. Suffice it to say that my Hampton Inn rewards points remain unused.

There were always merch tables with the expected fare of overpriced t-shirts, but it was the ducks that really caught me off guard. Multi-colored stuffed ducks (known as “good-luck ducks”) were selling at exorbitant prices. Even the smallest versions were $40 - $50 and the entire setup looked like a Temu rags-to-riches story.

The food was also a crap-shoot. Most featured the usual culinary fare of $13 hot dogs, but one innovative venue utilized a Hunger Games / cafeteria approach.

They had a menu listed, but when I approached the food counter there seemed to be an inordinate number of people milling around. I eventually caught a gentleman’s attention and politely requested chicken tenders.

He scoffed and informed me that I could have whatever I wanted as long as I was the first one to retrieve it from “the chute” once they dropped it. He nodded toward the assembled crowd as if to imply that only the strongest among us would be consuming poultry that day.

So, we all stood around pretending to be engrossed in our phone screens while secretly formulating our strategy. Every time the concession-coaster made noise, societal norms were dropped and choices were made. Eventually I got out with three tenders, a cookie, and not a shred of my dignity.

The routines themselves were always impressive and indicative of the sheer amount of work put into them. As best I can discern, the music must contain intermittent lasers sounds, triangle hits, a pulsating bassline, unintelligible lyrics (with the exception of a mid-song voice-over announcing the team’s name) and just enough recognizable melodic elements to remind you of a song without being familiar enough to necessitate royalty payments.

The overall audio landscape gives the impression of a rave with a cat walking across the buttons of a sound effects control board. I could not help but wonder what would happen if a team showed up and performed a somber interpretative dance to Go Rest High On That Mountain just to keep the energy in check.

The entire enterprise is brought to a close with the awards ceremony. It is here, that the true currency of competitive cheer is distributed: the banner.

The banner will be added to the gym’s collection and serve as a testament to the effectiveness of their program. In addition to the banner, select teams received a “golden ticket” which waived their entry fee for another (more expensive) upcoming competition. There were usually medals distributed to all participants as well.

We were constantly informed that events we attended were “officially sanctioned” by the USAF to ensure the safety of the participants. A voice intoned that the judges and staff were rigorously screened and held to the highest standard. The implication being that at that very moment, somewhere in America, there was an unsanctioned cheer event taking place in a burnt-out warehouse amid a doping scandal.

My daughter learned collaboration and discipline while I learned that sometimes it is worth it to spring for the Uber.