Cheerleading

Except from The Polyfax, Student Handbook, Date Unknown

What we think of as “cheerleading” today has only been in place for a little over a hundred year ("History of Cheerleading"). The idea of cheerleading started at universities as “crowd cheers” at sporting events. Poly had its crowd cheers too. The image on the left shows the "Official Poly Cheers" that appeared in the student handbook, possibly in the early 1900s. 

Student Handbook Article X Sections 1-4

As cheerleading evolved, the school began to have cheerleaders instead of crowd cheers. Poly emphasized the existence of cheerleading since the early 19th century. The Polyfax included the “Constitution of the Athletic Association” under the athletic section. Article X of this constitution is specifically about cheerleaders, and under Section I, it states that “there shall be a [cheerleading] team consisting of three appointed members, namely, captain and two assistant [cheerleaders].” At an early stage, Poly was already emphasizing the need for a cheerleading team. 

Early Cheerleaders at Poly

Before it changed to co-ed and for decades after, Poly did not have a cheerleading team that we take for granted today. At that point in Poly history, the school had its so-called “cheerleading team” consisting of a few male students, and the cheerleaders were present at school events with the mascot. 

While women were permitted to be on cheerleading teams, cheerleaders were predominantly male up until World War II. With “the men going off to war”, women filled the role on the sidelines. Once the war was over, cheerleading remained overwhelmingly a female activity ("History of Cheerleading"). However, Poly, being an engineering school with very low female student percentages, remained male-dominant cheerleaders until 1973. 

Yearbook Photograph of Cheerleaders in 1973

The male cheerleaders only seem to appear during school events and are not present at games to cheer the team on. With the increasing involvement of women in society and engineering schools particularly, the all-female cheerleading team made its first appearance in March 1973. In addition, it is also the first-ever all-female sports team at Poly. The cheerleaders were “a new breed of sports enthusiast at Poly” and emerged to cheer for the basketball team, representing support and school spirit. This was a significant change in the female involvement in athletics. However, at this point, the team population was not completely made up of currently enrolled students. Among the cheerleaders, two “are the wives of two recently graduated basketball” players. Consequently, the article in The Polytechnic Reporter introduced the cheerleading team to the school but also served as an advertisement for recruiting new members. The 1973 Polywog yearbook shows pictures of the cheerleading team under the athletics section.

Cheerleading Club at Poly in 1982

However, with the limitation of missing sources from the archives, there are some inconsistencies with the progression of cheerleading. In 1973, cheerleading emerged as an athletic team at Poly. In the 1982 Polywog yearbook, cheerleading appeared under the clubs and activities section, instead of the athletics. The yearbook also provided a brief description of this new cheerleading squad formed in 1982. From these two yearbooks, it seemed that Poly has started its cheerleading as a sport, then shifted to a club in less than a decade. Between 1973 and 1982, most of the years did not have cheerleading, whether as an athletics team or a club. As the yearbook suggests, a possible explanation for this shift is the difficulty in gathering enough members to join the team. Despite that, the formation of this cheerleading club was out of the same intention: to “increase school spirit and team morale” during games and to encourage Poly students to “support their athletic teams” and “develop pride” in their school. From 1982 onwards, the available archival sources show that the cheerleaders remained as a club, never an official sports team again.