Cheer Up

When Baylor announced the arrival of its latest varsity sport, a raucous cheer must have gone up around campus. The Baylor Board of Regents voted to add competitive cheerleading as Baylor’s eleventh women’s sport (and nineteenth overall) in July, with plans to kick off its inaugural season in the 2010-11 school year.

Wanting to add another women’s sport in order to push further toward Title IX compliance, BU officials recently surveyed the school’s female undergraduate students about their preferred choice. Several sports were mentioned—among them bowling, lacrosse, rowing, and beach volleyball—but cheerleading generated the most support.

“We certainly know that among the students at Baylor, a number of them participated in cheerleading and tumbling growing up,” Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw said. “But we were a little bit surprised that it came back number one in the survey of all the sports that were being considered, and did so overwhelmingly. So it was a clear statement from the undergraduates at Baylor that cheerleading was the preferred sport.”

McCaw said the growth of competitive cheerleading as a viable sport in high school and college athletics puts Baylor on the cutting edge. “We believe that five or ten years from now, it’s going to be a very wise decision,” he said.

Baylor is the first Big 12 school to add competitive cheerleading, though some twenty-four states recognize it as an interscholastic high school sport with a state championship. Baylor is the third school from a BCS conference to pick up the sport, joining Maryland from the ACC and Oregon from the Pac-10.

Next up for Baylor will be locating a coach. The position has been posted on the school’s website, and McCaw hopes to have someone hired this fall. Recruiting for the team’s thirty-five- to forty-member roster will start in the spring.