Profile-by-JacquelineP

Breaking the Stereotype

By Jakky Portelli

I walked into Nor Cal Elite and stood in shock with all the bustling that was going on around me. To my left, boys and girls running down a rough blue carpet and throwing all sorts of tumbling passes, to my left, girls being flung up into the air and doing twists and turns that I had never seen before. The atmosphere of the gym was intense, athletes yelling and running all around me, so focused on their routines, it was like I was invisible to them. I sat down on a nearby couch and met with a perky brown haired girl with a gigantic and stiff bow in her hair, she introduced herself as, Caity Smith, a cheerleader at Nor Cal.

Because people believe the rumors they hear, stereotypes stay alive in our community. One of the biggest stereotypes of all, cheerleading, has a particularly harsh stereotype of popular ditzy girls who only care about their appearance. Little do people know, there are all different types of cheerleading that should not be stereotyped this way but unfairly are, despite their talent. When I met Caity Smith, a club cheerleader from a local all star cheer team in San Jose, I was expecting to meet a sweet, over energetic teenage girl, instead, I met a serious and dedicated athlete.

Caity Smith comes from Archbishop Mitty High School, a private Roman Catholic high school in San Jose, California. A school where cheerleading is not offered because of the sleazy and skimpy perception they give off. Caity has been a part of both a school cheer team and a club cheerleading and with this background, Caity is knowledgeable about the differences and common stereotypes of the typical cheerleader.

When Caity first discovered club cheerleading, she was completely shocked by what dedicated athletes club cheerleaders were and immediately saw the differences between school cheerleading and club cheerleading. Coming from a background of playing soccer for a whopping twelve years, she came the realization that cheerleading was even more serious than her soccer team. “I started cheerleading last year and it’s definitely different than I thought it would be because I played club soccer for twelve years of my life and when you come to cheer there’s obviously more hours, more work, and you work very different muscles than you think you would use.” (Smith) Visiting Caity at her cheer leading practice, I could see this intense and serious commitment that these athletes were a part of.

After reading an article about stereotypes and cheerleading that stated, “Most people probably stereotype because they don’t know the truth and it’s easier to put everyone in their own little niche.” (History of Cheerleading). I quickly came to the reality of the truth in this fact. Expecting there to be a lot of sitting around on phones, and goofing off with friends, the cheerleaders were completely focused, getting to each formation as quickly as possible and redoing each more until they completed it perfectly, something I had never seen on my school cheer team.

The work ethic and talent of these athletes was so overwhelming it lead me to wonder how often they were practicing for their competitions. “My team this year practices Mondays five to seven. We also have optional tumbling only, sort of like clinics, for an hour on Tuesdays. On Wednesday we have another practice five to seven. Also, on Sunday we have another two hour practice for tumbling. During competition week, our schedule is totally different. We can have practices on top of practices depending on how well we’re

This is Nor Cal Elite’s gym in San Jose California. This is the location of where Caity and her team mates practice for their upcoming competitons.

doing or how much extra practice we need to do well and then we won’t practice on the weekend of the competition.” (Smith) Going to the practices, it was obvious the work was paying off. The coaches would be on top the girls to stop talking even at the littlest whisper and the girls would even tell each other to quiet down or focus more. Although the girls were completely harsh and serious at practice, yelling at eachother to, “get in your spots for the dance!” and to “tighten your muscles in your jumps!,” they were also constantly encouraging each other and helping one another with stunts, tumbling or the choreography of the dance. “When you show up for practice it’s more of a family and when I used to show up at practice for soccer we were like, ‘Oh Hey’ and then you would just go warm up. So there’s more of a family aspect when you come to cheer, everyone’s more intertwined than any other sports I can think of. For instance today, I think we have an eight hour practice and in between we’ll be like, ‘Okay go pile in my car we’ll go eat like greasy food.’

We also have team sleep overs and we’ll go sleep on the mats and we will also share hotel rooms and do our hair together before we compete, like we really do everything together.” (Smith) Seeing how closely connected this team was, and seeing what talented athletes they were, they appeared to me to be good role models and I couldn’t imagine why a school wouldn’t want to spread that dedicated and supporting spirit throughout their school.

“My school doesn’t have a cheer team because I go to a catholic school, and I’m not sure the exact reason but we’re not allowed to have cheerleaders just because of the impression that they give off, I guess to the student body, like we dress sleazy. But we are really no worse than gymnasts or any other indoor elite athletes.” (Smith) Doing some more research on cheerleaders and the perception of cheerleading, I found out that the problem wasn’t that all cheerleaders were being stereotyped unfairly, it was that people were assuming that club cheerleading was the same as school cheerleading, stereotyping the club cheer leaders. A recent article published about this matter stated that, “All-star was born in private gyms and clubs teaching cheer to girls of all ages.

At first, it was kind of considered the alternative for the ugly girls who couldn’t make the team at their local secondary school, but that very quickly changed. All-star cheerleading is by far the most physically demanding type of cheerleading, requiring all performers to have outstanding dance, gymnastic, stunting and cheerleading skills” (Ninemire). As I spent more time with the team.

I decided to accompany them to one of their competitions to see them truely in action. When I arrived at the San Jose Convention Center, where the cheer

leading competetion was being held, brightly colored bows and a cloud of giltter surrounded me. Each way I turned were girls and boys spraying their hair unitl it was rock solid and practicing the routines outside the stage room. I quickly understood how intense these cheerleaders were about competitions. “We always go like, ‘good luck!’ Some will even hug each other but there is always still like this

underground, ‘ I hate you , I’m going to beat you,’ so it’s pretty intense” (Smith). The atmosphere was definitely how Caity described it to be, with girls staring each other down from opposite ends of the warm up room and even when they simply passed by one another. After watching all the teams go on the stage, it was obvious how passionate these athletes were about cheerleading. Hitting every tumbling pass and stunt with all the power they had and using competely all their energy in the 2 minutes and 50 seconds they had to prove themselves to the judges. This was completely foreign to me, having the only competitions I had seen be on my school football feild, I was entirely impressed with the teams.

Returning to practice, Caity’s team continued to work hard and improve on their routine even just after competition.The team members would have breaks and spend every minute of them talking to one another and playing games. All of the girls got along so well, like they actually were a family. Not only were they a closely bonded family, but they were also talented, well rounded, down to earth athletes. From spending time with Caity and her team, my idea of them being simple, ‘ cheerleaders’, transformed to them being kind and talented people just like other althletes I had encountered with both inside and outside of school, people who could be respected.

“I think people just think they way they do about cheerleaders because we wear skirts in our uniforms, or we wear less clothes, but it’s kind of like, why aren’t gymnasts perceived that way too?

And I don’t know, it’s kind of sad because a lot of people won’t join cheerleading because they don’t want to be considered a ditsy person, and it’s sad because they could find a family and people who really care about each other from joining our team if they weren’t. So if we could just eliminate that sterotype of cheerleaders, ven, I’ve had guys who I’m friends with who want to join our team, but they are too scared of what people will think of them like, ‘Oh what will people think of me, will they think I’m, gay because I do cheer?’ And it’s like, there are people who do cheer that are not gay and they have a great time. It’s just really sad to me because a lot of it is sterotypical, like I really think our sport is the most sterotyped of them all,” (Smith). W