We've got spirit!
Yes we do!
We've got spirit!
How 'bout you?!

While not every school can lay claim to chess clubs, brain bowls, or even a debate team, wherever organized encouragement is required, there is cheerleading.  Both loved and hated, the butt of innumerable jokes and the envy of countless folks, cheerleaders are one of the most fascinating fixtures in the American scholastic experience.

While all but three percent of cheerleaders today are female, the first forty years of cheerleading history is exclusively male.  In 1894, Princeton graduate Thomas Peebles took the practice of crowd chanting national by introducing it at the University of Minnesota.  Four years later, Johnny Campbell became history's first recorded cheerleader when he actually stood before a crowd at the same university and directed them in a chant.  Shortly thereafter, the school introduced a six-member "yell leader" squad whose duty was to ensure the home crowd pep.  But due to the shortage of female sports in the 1920s, the practice of "cheerleading" turned towards girls.

Be aggressive!
B-E aggressive!
B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E!
Be! xx xx Aggressive! xx xx

Now, few things seem to capture the extra-curricular iconography of high school like cheerleading.  The pom-poms, the pleated skirts, the water-soluble team tattoos.  There would appear to be no ambivalent feelings about cheerleaders.  They seemed to have their pick of the dating pool.  They seemed to be constantly behind fundraisers.  In short, they were everywhere.  In remembering high school, they are essential and quintessential.  They've been portrayed as everything from ditzy to dynamic, from heartless to angelic.  But above all, they've been portrayed.

Pump, pump, pump it up!
Pump that team spirit up!
Keep, keep, keep it up!
Keep that team spirit up!
Shout, shout, shout it out!
Shout that team spirit out!
GO TEAM!