Cheerleading is for boys too

They hop, they bop, they wave their pom-poms ’til they drop; but there’s nothing coy or frilly about Europe’s first all-male cheerleaders, the Peewee Boyz. Unmistakably lads, they have just won their first major trophy at the International Cheer Championships, where they mixed it with rivals such as Gold Star Twinkles and Pink Ladies Supreme.

“You should have seen the judges’ faces when we came out of street-dancing and went into motion drill,” says Harvey Pratt, who’s nine and one of the eight boys in the team of under-10s. “It was like: Woah! Where did all that come from?”

It was a good day to topple long-standing gender monopoly, with women boxers making it to the London Olympiad at the same time. Government health advisers are beaming too, because the Peewees were launched by a PCT’s anti-obesity programme.

The notion came to dance instructor Ian Rodley, 25, who would have jumped at the chance to be a Peewee 15 years ago, when his parents couldn’t afford to pay for classes. Nobody has to pay to sign up with the Peewees’ patrons DAZL – Dance Action Zone Leeds – whose performers also include a pensioners’ group called Revolution.

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Was there reluctance to try something so absolutely associated with girls? “There was a bit of looking at one another, and umming,” says Ian. “But we started with street dance and urban, and then they said: ‘Let’s try the poms.'” The result, as the boys caper about in an all-black strip and spell DAZL with a flourish of pinky-purple fabric is “really masculine, high energy,  fast”.

Still, teasing is a given. Lewis Overhall, 10, says: “When I play football the other lads do take the pee but I don’t really care.” The troupe can give as good as they get; Harry Peach, eight, has held the Top Tackler award for Hunslet Warriors under-nines rugby league side for two years.

Most of the boys come from Miggy, the big Middleton council estate in South Leeds, which doesn’t have a reputation for shrinking violets. Rodley grew up in Belle Isle, a similar estate next-door, and synchs well with the team and their “fantastically supportive” parents.

History is also on the Peewees’ side. Cheerleading was largely male (and all-American) until 1923, when women began an invasion that became a rout. The first acknowledged cheerleader was student Johnny Campbell who directed crowds in the chant “Rah, Rah, Rah! Sku-u-mar, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!” at Minneapolis/St Paul in 1898.

Rodley has counted only four other all-boy teams worldwide today – in the US, Thailand and Japan. “But that’s going to change,” he says. Miggy’s older troupe of 13 to 15-year-old boys go public in January; they are already rehearsing.

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