This past week, a high school in New Jersey was left to face the consequences of inclusivity after a student’s mother complained to the school board when her daughter didn’t make the cheerleading squad. The result? A new rule stating that no one can be denied entry to the team and that from now on, squad members were required to accept everyone in order to be less discriminative.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the danger of being too politically correct. Within that article, I also touched on this layered issue of forced inclusivity disguised as a solution. I am a huge proponent of being inclusive, a point I made clear in past articles but my stance on the issue remains the same – if you have to force it, it’s not inclusive. And in this specific case, you are doing more long-term damage to the student who didn’t make the team than being cut ever did.
Like I mentioned, I’m the first to advocate for more accepting, well-rounded environments. But I am also the first to admit that inclusivity isn’t a blanket statement. It doesn’t everyone who applies is automatically accepted, it means that no one who is deserving can be denied simply because they are different.
If this student were denied because of something as uncontrollable as her sexuality, the color of her skin, her gender, or a disability we would be facing a different monster. Then I would light my torches and sharpen my pitchfork and fight right alongside her and demand change.
But as a person who was rejected from several (and I do mean several) sports teams because I was, to put it delicately, garbage, how can I possibly agree? How can I pretend that I deserved to be on a team just because I wanted to? How could I justify being accepted, when I was holding the team back?
I don’t just say this as a bystander, I say this as someone who quite literally was this girl. Or, at least, a version of her. Yes, I didn’t make most teams I tried out for, but I was once a cheerleader too.
Most importantly, I was a very bad cheerleader.
My memories of my time spent on a cheer team are all very traumatic and heavily repressed, so I won’t go into much details for both our sakes. A brief summary would be that my school didn’t have a proper cheerleading squad, so I was part of a sort of club squad. My two best friends were good, like backflips and front flips kind of good, so they were on what they called the ‘competitive’ team of our age group and I was on the step below.
To be on their team you had to have your back hand-spring, front tuck, and be well on your way to landing your back tuck. To be on my team, you had to show up. We went through the tryout process like everyone else, but anyone who didn’t make the competitive team still made my team.
It was the participation trophy of cheerleading teams.
Some of my teammates were really promising. They were well on their way to making the competitive team next year while others, like myself, were charity cases. I mean, I could barely do a proper cartwheel. To their credit, my coaches were always encouraging and inclusive. They never made me feel like I was as terrible as I obviously was.
But just because they were inclusive, didn't mean I ever felt like I truly belonged.
I was a cheerleader for three years before I realized it’s not what I was called to do. Not only was it getting me absolutely nowhere, I knew deep down that I wasn’t cut out to be a cheerleader because seriously, cheerleading is no joke. I had fun, sure, and for many of my fellow charity cases that was enough reason to stay on the team and I commend them.
But I had no business being a cheerleader. I was literally paying to put on a uniform and embarrass myself in front of crowds of people and for a while, that got me down. I was humiliated because I came to the shocking (well, it was shocking for me, not for anyone who’d ever seen me cheer) realization that I just wasn’t fit for sports.
Then I found what I was good at and I worked at it and I improved. Seeing where I am now, I would be pissed if just anyone got the same rewards I have without having put any of the risks in.
A sports team, much like academic scholarships or awards, are based on merit. You make a team because you’re good. Because you have the skills to move the team forward. You need to prove that you can slam that dunk, or get a touchdown, or score a goal. And if you’re not good enough the first time, you practice until you are because you’re passionate. You don’t throw a tantrum after one botched try-out.
If being an athlete were easy, I would be an Olympic gold medalist.
In a statement, the team’s head cheerleader is quoted saying that all of her hard work is now for nothing and many would argue that she’s being dramatic but, is she? I’m not so sure.
As the team’s leader, it is her job to ensure that she equips her team with the tools to win. That means rigorous routines, long practices and yes, vetting who deserves to join her squad. She has put time and dedication into ensuring that every member of her team is good and ready and adds to the team. Now that they’re forced to accept just anyone, the quality of her team just bottomed out.
They will be competing against teams with the best cheerleaders their schools have to offer, meanwhile they will be lucky if everyone on their team can memorize and properly execute their routines. Her workload just tripled overnight.
Would this rule have passed if the sport was soccer? Or football? Or basketball and baseball? Or any 'traditional' sport? Probably not. But because cheerleading isn’t always regarded as a real sport, but rather as a popularity scheme, they’re facing the same discrimination the school board thinks they’re preventing.
I’m sure that this one student will not make much of a difference and maybe, just maybe, she really deserved it. But it’s the precedent she’s setting that is dangerous. She may have won a spot on the team, but she lost a very valuable life lesson.
We won’t always get the things we want in life, even when we deserve them. Sometimes, it feels like we don’t get them especially when we deserve them. It’s a hard, but necessary, pill to swallow. If everything was handed to us, we wouldn’t have to work, or improve, or grow. There would be nothing that set us apart from everyone else.
In this entire mess of a situation the real disservice isn’t to the cheerleaders on the team, it’s to the future students who will make the team not because they worked for it, but because they could. Because in the real world, there is no inclusivity clause.
