Excerpt: 'Cheer!: Three Teams on a Quest for College Cheerleading's Ultimate Prize'

March 11, 2008 — -- Cheerleading may look like fun and games, but according to author Kate Torgovnick's new book, it's serious business.

"Cheer!" takes a dive into the competitive college cheerleading world and gives an intimate look at the sport. Torgovnick followed three highly ranked teams during the 2006-2007 season: the University Lumberjacks of Nacogdoches, Tex.; the Southern University Jaguars of Baton Rouge, La.; and the University of Memphis All-Girl Tigers. She found the women on the teams had a lot in common, including an obsession with staying thin. For a peek at the book, read the excerpt below.

The Yale of College Cheerleading

The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

Brad Patterson leans back in his chair. On the blue mat in front of him, more than 150 cheerleaders form an ocean of bodies as they practice. Brad crosses his arms over his chest, his baby face out of place on his bulky body. In his purple SFA polo shirt with sunglasses tucked into the open buttons, he appears laidback. But he's taking careful mental notes. It's the day before tryouts for the Stephen F. Austin cheerleading squad. As head coach, by the end of tomorrow, Brad will have to whittle the 150 people on the mat down to just thirty.

Stephen F. Austin State University is the Yale of college cheerleading. They've won their division, Cheer I at NCA Nationals, eight times. Just three weeks ago, they clinched a fourth set of championship rings in a row. In fact, the squad has won every year since it's been under Brad's direction.

SFA is located in Nacogdoches, Texas, a city that calls itself "The Oldest Town in Texas," although Brad tells me two other cities claim the same thing. As I made the two-hour drive from Houston, I passed logging truck after logging truck, making it obvious how the school chose the Lumberjack as their mascot. Nacogdoches is small — a main drag with the university on one side and strip malls on the other. A water tower looms above the town with the letters SFA emblazoned across it in huge purple letters.

Nacogdoches boasts only 30,000 people, but a third of them routinely show up at SFA football games. There's enough interest in cheerleading here to warrant two all-star gyms. But that shouldn't be surprising. After all, in Texas, football is often referred to as a religion, and cheerleaders are the high priests. As I watch the SFA hopefuls practice, Newton's theory of gravity seems broken — nearly every woman who goes up stays up. Still, Brad's lips are pursed. "This is one of my smaller tryouts," he says in a smooth Southern twang. "That's how it is the years we win — people get intimidated. In the years we don't win, they come crawling out of the woodwork."

Brad has recruited many of the people on the mat, scoping them out at competitions and swooping down to suggest that they try out. "At this point, I'm seriously looking at fifteen girls and twenty-five guys. But my mind can be changed during tryouts — it always is," he says.

Sierra Jenkins is no doubt one of Brad's top picks. Her über-blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a messy ponytail and a hello, my name is sticker is affixed to her black spandex shorts, dubbing her #48. She hails from Arlington, Texas, and has cheered since elementary school. In the fall, she'll be a junior, and she already wears two National Championship rings around her thin fingers. In fact, in the eight years she's competed at Nationals with school teams, she has never lost.

Sierra is used to being the best. As a college freshman, she headed to a top cheer college in Hawaii, where she established herself as a standout. But it wasn't the idyllic year of waterfall hikes and white sand beaches she'd imagined. "I was the biggest girl on the team. I thought I was fine, but my coaches were like, 'You gotta lose weight,' " says Sierra, a just-gargled-gravel roughness to her voice. "My first few weeks in college, all my dreams and aspirations went down the drain."

Sierra developed an eating disorder that brought her weight down to a scary ninety-five pounds. Still, she shone on the mat and was even made a captain. But midway through her sophomore year, Sierra realized she needed help. She headed home to Texas.

Back home, she enrolled in a junior college to keep in shape, and her flexibility and energy quickly made her the team's star. "I'm always trying to be like, 'Look at me. Look at me,' " she says. "My method is just to have more enthusiasm than everyone else. I want to see everyone's eyes going to me." Today, on the mat, Sierra does a Rewind. It's a move I first saw at last year's Nationals, when a cheerleader explained to me, "Every year, there's a move that's the move to try. This year, it's the One-Arm Rewind." The name makes complete sense once you see it — it looks like that old special effects trick where an editor plays the film backwards to make it look like someone is jumping up instead of down.

Sierra stands in front of her partner, her knees bent. His hands are placed on her lower back and she leans back on his wrists. She swings her arms and flips backwards as he grunts and pushes up, like a track and fielder throwing a shot put ball.

Sierra flexes her feet sharply in the air, uncurling her body into a straight line. There's a loud smack as her feet land in her partner's open palm. Her big, brown eyes widen as she smiles. Her brows swoop in thin arches more fitting to a silent movie star.

Along the walls of the women's basketball gymnasium where tryout practice is being held, a mural is painted of women dribbling basketballs. Bleachers run around the perimeter of the room, where a few parents sit, nervously biting their fingernails. Brad admits that parents can be uppity about tryouts. "I'll get phone calls from moms who have kids in the seventh grade. They'll ask, 'What would she need to do to make SFA?' I say, 'Call me in five years,' " he jokes with a dry delivery.

There is no official agenda for today's practice — the cheerleaders are free to rehearse anything they want in preparation for tomorrow. Brad has asked that the cheerleaders find someone new to try out with, rather than auditioning with a regular partner. All day, guys and girls have walked up to each other asking, "Will you stunt with me?" like they're at a middle school dance. By the end of the day, they need to map out the three stunts they'll perform at tryouts.

Most of the cheerleaders in the room are hedging the uncertainty by choosing a partner from last year's SFA team. "Returners spots are not guaranteed," says Brad. "But it's rare that I won't take someone back. I pull kids from all over the country, so if someone uprooted their life and moved here, I'm not gonna replace them with someone who's just a little bit better."

Yvette Quiñones runs up to the table where Brad sits. Her soft belly pokes forward like a little girl unaware that she's supposed to suck in. She is one of the smallest women I've ever seen — 4'11" and ninety pounds, a stature she attributes to her Mexican heritage. Her pin-straight hair falls over her rounded cheeks.

Even though she looks young, Yvette will be a senior at SFA. She's one of the few returning flyers from last year's team, and she's already agreed to stunt with four guys at tryouts tomorrow. "I better make captain for this," she jokes, as yet another guy asks to be her partner.

The men flock to Yvette because of her bubbly demeanor and because they assume her small stature will make stunting a breeze. But Yvette knows that isn't always true. "Sometimes guys overtoss me since I'm so light. They can't control it," she explains. "So if it's not working out, I'll tell them, 'I know the perfect girl for you,' and introduce them to someone else."

Yvette strolls back to the mat, and Brad's phone rings for the hundredth time today. "There's a girl on the way now who had to take the SAT this morning," he says. "According to her mom, she's God's gift to cheerleading."

Like academic scholars, cheerleaders have specialties. Men can be stunters or tumblers — a precious few do both well. Occasionally, a woman on a Coed team will be a tumbler, but more often they are flyers. Some flyers are fantastic all-around, while others concentrate on partner stunting, basket tosses, or pyramids. To decide who makes a team, coaches will often factor in what specialties they are currently lacking.