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Cheerdance Pe

Grade 12 PE

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
16 views3 pages

Cheerdance Pe

Grade 12 PE

Uploaded by

Meyn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CHEERDANCE

1. What is Cheerdance?
 An organized sports activity involving short routines that combine dance, gymnastics, and stunt elements to
cheer on teams, most commonly football. Performers of these one to three-minute routines are called
"cheerleaders".
 Cheerleading originated in Britain and spread to the United States where it remains most common, but has
also become popular in other parts of the world, such as Europe, Central America, Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, and Asia.
 There are an estimated 3.5 million cheerleaders in the US alone, not including dance team members,
gymnasts, and other affiliated participants which would raise that number to above 5 million.
 Cheerleaders outside the US total about 100,000.

HISTORY OF CHEERDANCE
 Cheerleading dates to the 1860s, in Great Britain, and entered the US in the 1880s.
 Although women currently dominate the field, cheerleading was begun by men.
 As early as 1877, Princeton University had a "Princeton Cheer", documented in the February 22, 1877, March
12, 1880, and November 4, 1881, issues of The Daily Princetonian (award-winning daily independent student
newspaper of Princeton University. Founded in 1876 and daily since 1892, the Princetonian is among the
oldest college newspapers in the country).
 The cheer, "Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Tiger! S-s-s-t! Boom! A-h-h-h!" remains in use with slight
modifications today, where it is now referred to as the "Locomotive"
 Princeton University class 1882 graduate THOMAS PEEBLES, moved to Minnesota in 1884. He
transplanted the idea of organized crowds cheering at football games to the University of Minnesota, got the
idea that crowd chanting at football games would boost school spirit so they came up with a catchy cheer.
 The term "Cheer Leader" had been used as early as 1897
 On November 2, 1898 (Officila birthday of an organized cheerleading), U-Minnesota student Johnny
Campbell led an organized cheer at a football game between Minnesota and Princeton University, so you
might say he was the first actual "cheer leader".
 Johnny Campbell directed a crowd in cheering "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity!
Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!",
 Soon after, in 1903, the University of Minnesota organized the first cheer fraternity called Gamma Sigma
 In the 1920s (1923) women became involved in cheerleading.
 Female cheer squads began to include gymnastics, dance and other showy stunts into routines, and in the
1930s cheers were aided by the use of paper pom-poms (the first vinyl pom-poms weren't manufactured until
1965).
 By the1940s women were mainly leading the cheers, and routines took on a voice their own.
 In 1948 Lawrence Herkimer founded the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) which began to hold
cheer workshops. The first one was held that year, with more than 50 attendees.
 That number grew to 350 by the following year, and by the 1950s most high schools had a squad.
 By the 1960s just about every high school and college in the country had cheerleaders.
 The Universal Cheerleaders Association was created in 1974 to provide educational training for college and
high school cheer squads. UCA summer camps were well-attended. The first stunt taught was the spectacular
"liberty" mount.
 Modern cheerleading as we know it today began in the 1980s with flashy dance routines and gymnastics
stunts.
 In 2003, a national council was formed to offer safety workshops to cheerleading squads and their coaches,
and today the National Collegiate Athletic Association mandates that college cheer coaches complete
official safety courses.
Lawrence Herkimer, "Grandfather of Cheerleading"
 He founded the National Cheerleaders Association at Southern Methodist University, holding
cheerleading camps since 1948.
 His first camp drew 52 girls and one boy. His camps have since grown to more than twenty thousand
attendees.
 He founded the Cheerleading Supply Company in 1953, patenting the first pompoms, or pom-pons.
 Herkimer chose to call them "Pom-pon" when he learned that the word "pom-pom" in other languages
contained vulgar meanings.
 His pom-pon with the hidden handle was patented in 1971
 Herkimer created the "Herkie" cheerleading jump by accident when he intended to perform a split jump.

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