Cheerleaders in upstate New York are begrudgingly following a new policy laid down after a parent filed a discrimination suit with the US Department of Education under Title IX. Their tragic fate? Having to cheer for the girls' basketball team. Oh, the horror! Over half the squad at Whitney Point High School quit after the policy was enacted, and the remaining squad members only cheer at home games now instead of traveling with the boys' team as they had in seasons past.
Schools in Maryland and Massachusetts have cheerleaders-for-everyone policies, and a group of P.E. teachers in California made a call to arms for equal moral support for girls' teams last spring.
In New York, the changes are being implemented with little grace or joy. The boys' basketball team misses their cheering section when they're on the road. The girls' team isn't entirely on board with being cheered for in the first place. And the cheerleaders themselves are making the best of it, but as Whitney Point cheer captain Katelin Maxson notes, it's a lot of work to decorate twice as many lockers on game day with a third of the cheerleaders they had before. “We joined sports to have fun, but they’re basically taking the fun
away and giving us more work,” she said. “The interest is down so much,
and it’s going to keep dropping, until there’s no cheerleading anymore.”
