Cheers and Jeers : Despite Taunts, Male Athletes Find Success as Cheerleaders

Lucky Shawn Krauss. The graduating senior at Canoga Park High is living a stereotypical boyhood fantasy.

He dates a star cheerleader.

And so does she.

Krauss is one of eight proud males on Canoga Park’s 18-member national champion cheerleading squad. Amid the requisite taunts of homosexuality and the diametrical accusations of skirt chasing, this contingent of young men has done repeatedly what most Canoga Park teams rarely do:

Win.

First place at the United Spirit Assn. Nationals, earning a trip to Japan. First at the L.A. Games. First at the Universal Cheerleader Assn. West Coast Championship. Second at the National High School Cheerleading Championship preliminaries.

The squad’s success has spawned a silent revolution against sissy stereotypes.

“There’s no real stigma here anymore,” said Sara Colonia, Krauss’ girlfriend. “Last year we had a lot of guys trying out who didn’t even make it.”

Krauss, 18, made it two years ago. Now he is State champion in exhibition partner stunting.

“I played baseball here for two years, but then some guys just asked me to try out for cheerleading,” he said. “There’s more intensity here than in baseball.”

That intensity is generated by Carolyn Purkey, the ebullient, demanding coach of both the regular cheerleading squad and the co-ed competition team at Canoga Park.

“Coach Purkey is tough,” Eddie Cruz said. “She gets this look in her eyes when we do things wrong, and she just won’t let us leave until we get it right. She is dedicated, and she expects us to be dedicated, too.”

To Noah Sacks, she is a mom away from Mom.

“She does not like errors,” Sacks said. “Always be on time, keep the grades up. She is strict. But this team is like a family.”

In 10 years of coaching at her alma mater, Purkey has developed a cheerleading empire without compromising academics. Her squad has the highest cumulative grade-point average of any team on campus, thanks in part to a rule requiring those with sub-C averages to sacrifice lunch for study hall.

Another rule helped debunk cheerleading’s Barbie doll image. Before Purkey arrived, students voted on a cheer squad through a popularity contest, based more on attractiveness than ability.

Today, she hand-picks two squads. The first is an all-girl accessory to school athletic teams: participants must be adept at generating spirit, stimulating crowds however dreary the score.

“Every girl has to attend a week-long seminar to learn football,” Purkey said. “They have to know what they are cheering about. The kids are cheerleaders first, competitors second.”

The second is a co-ed squad envied by cheerleading coaches around the nation. Before finicky judges, participants must be capable of flawlessly executing a 150-second routine, the first half of which focuses on boisterous cheering and the second half on gymnastics and rhythmic dancing challenging enough to make a contortionist cringe.

Purkey’s routines in particular are not for somebody with acrophobia. Tossed like beanbags to heights of 25 feet, girls perform splits, pump their fists, and curdle in glee, before tumbling into the waiting arms or palms of boys below. Girls are also the top rung on the precarious human pyramids, which must be held together for several seconds.

While on the ground, girls have it no easier, passing boys in a series of synchronized cartwheels, during which the slightest misstep could cost the squad everything.

Boys have to display some rhythm.

“I have no rhythm, so I don’t dance well,” Mark Adams said. “But here you have to show coordination or it doesn’t work.”

For Canoga Park, it works even when it doesn’t. At the NHSCC Nationals in Florida, judges overlooked an early drop because of the intricacy of Canoga’s program, choreographed by Purkey.

“She is one of the best coaches I’ve known,” Adams said. “During the season, I always regret it, saying ‘Damn, this is too hard.’ But without her, the goals we achieved, the championships we won, would never have happened.”

Ballroom dancing is an Olympic sport in 1996; Purkey’s minions hardly participate in a mere activity. The squad practices three to five days a week during the year, averaging four hours a practice.

“They don’t call this a sport, but it’s a sport,” said Cruz, who played basketball and baseball and served as senior class president.

Along with Jeff Mramor, George Shabazz and Omar Campbell, Cruz passed up a basketball playoff game this year to compete in Nationals in Florida, one of cheerleading’s travel perks. “It was tough to skip the basketball game,” said Campbell, who also runs track and plays football. “But in basketball, you can go on without one guy. In cheerleading if one of the guys is gone, it throws off the whole routine. Anyway, they did fine without us.”

The basketball squad, coached by Ralph Turner, defeated Lincoln in its first-round game, only to lose in the quarterfinals after the cheerleading quartet returned rusty.

Turner, a first-year coach, never envisioned conflicts with cheerleading.

“I allowed them to remain cheerleaders,” Turner said. “I couldn’t punish them for something that I had allowed.”

Turner’s tolerance is not widely shared.

“Coaches want you to explore new sports, but then when you say cheerleading, it’s like, ‘Hey, wait a minute,”’ said Aaron Martin, who plays tight end on the football team. “But this is harder than most sports. We compete against thousands of people on a stage. Now in football, I can deal with a crowd, there’s no pressure. “

Mramor believes that jealousy causes coaches to disparage Purkey’s program, even as she does those coaches a favor. Though cheerleading competitions emphasize technique and timing over strength, several team members noted that their leg power has increased from all the lifting that cheering requires and the running that Purkey prescribes.

“This helps me in other sports,” Mramor said. “Conditioning seems so much easier in basketball after this.”

In Campbell’s opinion, cheerleading is the most mentally taxing of his athletic endeavors.

“If you don’t put a lot into it, you can’t cut it,” Campbell said.

And the pressure is greater.

“If you drop a girl, it’s a lot different from dropping a pass,” he said.

Speaking of dropping passes, the football team was 1-9 this year.

“Guys on the football team used to call us queerleaders,” Campbell said. “But they don’t mess with us so much now, because they see how much we win.”

Three football players are not only complimentary of male cheerleaders, but are striving to join them. Mike Mollett, is learning from Krauss, whom he calls “All-World.” Raymar Adams is hoping it improves his agility and strength as a tailback. And Shawn Ford is discovering that cheering is harder than it looks.

“There’s unbelievable pressure to do what they have done before,” Ford said.

Pressure that comes with tradition, which may also bring acceptance to cheerleaders of both sexes. After all, the first reported cheer squad was an all-male conglomerate of yell-leaders at the University of Minnesota in 1898. Females didn’t get involved until World War I sent all the cheerleaders overseas in 1917.

In the last 15 to 20 years, according to Paul Marks of the United Spirit Association, co-ed cheer has expanded exponentially.

“People have become extremely creative within our safety guidelines,” Marks said. “The competitors are athletes, though I hate to call it a sport.”

Calling it a sport would subject it to a series of additional regulations. Marks’ organization, like others involved with competitive cheer, does publish a list of safety guidelines, among which is a mandate for a spotter in high school.

A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Reports study indicated cheerleading injuries increased between 1991 and 1993, but remain more in line with gymnastics than with football or basketball.

Said Purkey, who reported two major injuries in 10 years: “At many schools, the kids aren’t supervised, and that’s when you have a disaster. Haven’t had that here.”

But things tend to be different at Canoga Park.

“The fact that so many [male] athletes are doing it, wanting to try out, shows that it is becoming accepted,” Cruz said.

Krauss and Colonia, the cheery couple, should have plenty of more time together. Both are bound for Long Beach State, equipped with partial cheerleading scholarships.

Perhaps the couple that cheers together, stays together.