Schools for cheerleaders?
Tumbling school?
Cheerleader scholarships?
Suffering polecats, whatever next?
Schools for falling down manholes, tripping over kerbstones :eek:
Time to unleash my inner bimbo? 
Hey, this is America. We’ve got something for everyone and countless TV shows to document the more obscure elements. Including suffering polecats, I’m sure.
Your friend seems over the top about it. I don’t think a five year old reallly has much concept of what they’re doing. It’s just supposed to be fun for them.
But I also have the wacky idea that kids should do sports because they enjoy it. If they’re doing it on the minor, minor chance of getting a scholarship, that’s also no good. They’d have a better chance of getting a full ride by fellating the dean.
A nitpick, but the woman decided it would be wrong to kill the teenaged girl. So she decided to kill the girl’s mother instead, figuring it would upset the girl so much she would drop out of the competition.
My daughter was a cheerleader for a while, first in Middle School for basketball, then on a competition squad - that’s the type that doesn’t cheer for a team, just competes with other cheerleading squads. She enjoyed it, but ended up giving it up for ice hockey. It was safer as there were too many injuries in cheerleading.
Well thank goodness her better nature prevailed. :rolleyes: <— at psycho cheer mom, not you
That would be the case of Wanda Holloway , brilliantly portrayed by Holly Hunter in the televised movie.
I agree - I guess I don’t understand the attraction of having a child so young in competition. That is all this is about; they don’t cheer for a team.
I don’t have kids so what do I know? I am not one of those “I don’t have kids so I can tell you how to raise yours” type of people. I just know that this woman is always complaining about not having enough money, that her two ex-husbands are late with child support, and then she goes and stick her little girl in this. It was HER idea, not the little girl’s.
And I would by no means voice my doubts to her - it is not any of my business. I do, however, enjoy having a place where I can vent about things people do that baffle me. 
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In defence of scrunchies. Scrunchies are marvelous for curly hair. Curly hair tends to tangle soon as you look at it so any rubber band tends to get all snarled and nasty. The smooth surface of the scrunchie helps avoid tangles.
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Cheerleading or anything at five years of age is OK if the kid is into it, or requires only mild pushing. I think it’s good for a kid to have some kind of physical activity from the start, and often you have to bug them a bit. It doesn’t have to be for a scholarship, just something to do and be proud of. (Though I wouldn’t necessarily pick cheerleading.) It’s only when the mother goes crazy with it that it grows to be a problem. I have seen five year olds coming to dance class with mothers of both stripes. In general, kids that have good exercise habits from when they were young, in terms of sports, tend to continue having them.
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Male cheerleaders. Well, when I went to school, only about 12 years ago, male cheerleading was the height (er…depth) of cheerleading. You might as well just throw your social career in the toilet. It reminds me of that movie Dodgeball wherein there is a male cheerleader; Vince Vaughn even makes a comment to this effect. “Things sure have changed from when I was young.”
You don’t know how many times I almost spelled it "schrunchies ".
You seem to think cheerleading consists solely of shaking pom-poms and yelling “Two Four Six Eight! Who do We Appreciate!” It is much more than that. They do complicated routines involving some serious athletic talent. Think “synchronized team gymnastics and dance” instead of cheerleading. See this video for what I mean.
This page lists some of the colleges and universities which offer cheerleading scholarships, and gives an idea of how much in the way of money and other considerations is available to a typical recipient.
The Kilgore Rangerettes are considered a drill team, as distinct from a cheerleading squad, but are quite prestigious. The Rangerettes regularly appear in such events as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and were invited to both of former Phillips Academy cheerleader George W. Bush’s presidential inauguration celebrations. This list features a sampling of famous people who once led cheers at various levels.
Now hang on, here. I’m not a cheerleader, former cheerleader, or cheerleading fan, but Imaybe you don’t have a very good understanding of what is involved in cheerleading if you think it is akin to falling down or tripping in the amount of skill required.
Modern U.S. cheerleading requires extensive tumbling skills, including cartwheels, backflips (starting on your feet, do a backward somersault in mid-air and land back on your feet) and whips (basically a running front flip). Much modern cheerleading also involves “stunts” such a pyramids and lifts, and many of those involve “fliers,” petite cheerleaders who are thrown high into the air. This level of cheerleading requires strength, agility, and balance, and there is a clear level of danger involved in sport-level cheering – so much so that some schools will not allow stunts (lifts or tosses of fliers). To do that stuff, and at many U.S. universities, to compete for cheerleading scholarships, which are athletic scholarships – yes, participants go to cheerleading camps and gymnastic schools.
Maybe you think cheerleading is this, but the modern reality is more like this. I couldn’t do it in a million years – never could – and I’m a past-master at tripping over curbs.
Last night the news was on at my parents’ house and my mom said, “Look at that - a chunky cheerleader!” And there was, the squad captain of some local school. It says something that it was worth commenting over.
However, neither athletics nor cheerleading was particularly important at my high school.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg!?!?! :eek:
This is a small town story. My younger daughter, now the vice-principal of an inner-city junior high school, was a varsity basketball cheerleader for two years, mostly because she got crosswise with the girls’ basketball coach. If her experience means anything the requirements to be a cheerleader are to be out going, reasonably athletic, willing to go to every game and have sweat splashed on you and (last but surely not least) to have tolerant and indulgent parents. I’m not sure that being part of an elite cliché is required – maybe that goes with being out-going. Nor is being drop dead attractive a requirement – our kid was (and is) reasonably attractive but also is a horse – six feet tall and 140 pounds and the wing span of a condor. For her cheerleading was a chance to stay active in the off-season when she wasn’t in volleyball, fall track or spring track. Overall, it was a good experience for her.
Incidentally, there was no tradition of cheerleading in the family. Her mother played trombone in the pep and marching band; her father sat on the bench in four sports.
But did he create the name? About five years later, I was in Colombia and my gf asked me how to say “mono” in English (because she used one) and I had no idea. I could only say “hair thing.” When I got back to the States, I went into a RiteAid, and found that they were called “hair accessories.” Eventually I found someone who told me the word “scrunchie.” I found it in a new dictionary, dating it to 1995.
I think that the name came about because the thing “scrunchies” the hair, but it took time.
A few years ago a young (college) online friend of mine from Hampshire accompanied his class on a trip to New York City. While messing about on various websites prior to his trip he started chatting with a girl and eventually asked me, “So I met this girl online who’s a cheerleader. Is that a good thing? Is it worth trying to arrange a meeting while I’m in NYC?”
My response was something like: “Some people think that’s cool, if they’re into Barbie dolls. I think most girls who are into athletics actually play a sport rather than cheer on the boys and, in my personal experience, are rather more well-regarded and well-adjusted than the pleated-skirt clique. But that’s just my two quid.”
Cheerleaders are fluff - good fluff, but still fluff. I’ve always thought of them as athletes who weren’t good enough to make either the gymnastics team or dancers who didn’t have the dedication to go pro. That opinion would get me ostracized in some segments of American society but I wouldn’t care if those segments sent me to Coventry.