Like Stefan Fatsis' Word Freak and Mark Obmascik's The Big Year, Cheer gives us a look inside a subculture that outsiders may have never really been aware of. This time, it's college cheerleading.
Cheerleading has become a full-fledged sport, one that makes just as many physical demands on its participants as football or basketball. It's one of the most dangerous sports, too, with an injury rate so high that many lifts and throws have been banned unless the performing surface is either gym mats or natural grass. That means that many cheerleading squads can't perform their most elaborate routines at sporting events; basketball courts and Astroturf are too dangerous for those tricks.
So for most cheerleaders, the year is divided into two pieces. During the fall and winter, when they are obliged to cheer on their sports teams -- what's known as "spirit cheering" -- the routines are often simpler, and the cheerleaders are using the time to get into top physical shape for the more difficult spring, when they will be preparing their competitive routines.
Torgovnick follows three top teams through a single year. The Lumberjacks of Stephen F. Austin State University are a national powerhouse, hoping to win their fifth consecutive national title. The Southern University Jaguars believe they can compete with the best, if only they can convince the school to foot the $17,000 bill it will take for them to travel to Nationals. The University of Memphis All-Girl squad does lifts, throws, and pyramids that are the envy of male cheerleaders, but still don't get the respect they feel they deserve.
Torgovnick does a fine job of building suspense and drama throughout her year, as the teams prepare for their championship meets. Unlike most sports, there are very few preliminary competitions between schools during the year. There are so few, in fact, that schools have to submit videotapes for preliminary judging to qualify for Nationals, and most schools will have never seen any of their rivals perform before Nationals.
The biggest missed opportunity here, I think, comes from the fact that none of the three teams compete against one another at the end. There are two different organizations that sponsor a national championship, and the Lumberjacks and Jaguars don't attend the same one; the Memphis All-Girl squad competes only against other female teams.
Still, each team's story is filled with drama, and each team has its own set of challenges to overcome. At Stephen F. Austin, there's a last-minute coaching change just as the season begins; the Jaguars, located in Baton Rouge, are still struggling -- individually and institutionally -- with the aftermath of Katrina; the Memphis women are plagued all year by injuries.
There are a lot of people to keep track of here, and Torgovnick does a good job of keeping everyone straight for us, providing just enough reminders as to which Chelsea or James we're talking about this time. Chapters rotate among the three teams, with one out-of-place extra chapter in which Torgovnick interviews a former cheerleader who talks about the abuse of drugs in the sport; apparently, one is not allowed to write any sort of sports book these days without the obligatory "drugs bad" chapter.
That misstep aside, though, this is a solid piece of journalism. Torgovnick is lucky enough to have chosen three teams with particularly dramatic stories to tell, and she tells them in an entertaining way.
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