The Sandspur

Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: Sports

Flash forward a few months. You are sitting at a basketball game. Half time rolls around. What do you typically expect on the court at this time? Gratuitously arousing dances brought to you by the cheerleaders. The danger of this ritual's absence could be looming.

The Rollins Cheerleading team has become a victim of the athletic department's careless management. They are no longer recognized as a team, but as a club, having to come up with their own funding. The following recounts the tragic downfall of the cheerin' Tars.

Last year, the squad started with eleven highly conditioned athletes, great chemistry, and two apparently prepared coaches. They started off the season providing us with much needed spirit and enthusiasm, lead by head coach Joy Buendia and assistant coach Bethany Gerber, both of whom were paid by the school. Then, they stopped being polite, and things started to get real, leading to disaster.

As the season progressed, some of the girls became disillusioned by the lack of leadership their head coach was providing, so more than half of the squad quit over Christmas break. To make maters worse, their head coach quit and their assistant coach had a baby. Those cheerin' Tars were caught in troubled waters, but they kept their heads about them and stayed the course, navigating through the season by recruiting three new members. Practices were put to a halt as they did not have coach supervision, so they were just showing up at games and winging it.

Over the summer, the Athletic Department decided to put the varsity cheer team under review, canceling their 2007-2008 season and pulling all funding. But this would not stop two dedicated women whose blood runs blue and gold.

Sophomores Monique Comeau and Suzanne Wilbarger were not going to let a lack of funds stop them from bringing the spirit to a otherwise soulless campus. They banded together, consulted with the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership, and formed a club. They held tryouts all by themselves and assembled a talented team of fourteen girls.

They are going to have to fund everything themselves, from uniforms to pom-poms to shoes. This is a terrible injustice. Any school with a respectable basketball team should have a funded cheerleading team, it's just science. Each girl has to pay $200 in dues, but that leaves the team $700 in the hole, and that is just to cover the cost of uniforms, hiring a coach would be financially impossible, and going to cheer camp, which I was assured is a must for any successful cheerleading team, is out of the question.

To make up the difference, the cheerin' Tars are instituting various fundraisers such as donut sales, a cheerleading camp for local children, and of course, regular bikini car washes.

I recently attended a practice, to delve even deeper into the collective psyche of the cheerin' Tars, and although the merits of cheerleading as an athletic sport are widely debated, what I witnessed was far from powderpuff playtime. The cheerleaders left their blood, sweat and tears on the mat, as they attempted stunts like the deadly scorpion, and the gravity defying super split. I even witnessed a heated argument over the merits of long socks versus those of short socks.

So please, support these girls in their quest to bring spirit and excitement back to the campus, you know your car is getting a bit dirty.

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