Keeping the Spirit in Spirit Squad

Don’t get me wrong, I like Spirit Squad.

Admittedly, I didn’t even understand what Spirit Squad was until the second week of this school year (mind you, I’m a junior), but I think it’s pretty cool. Spirit Squad is a way for the seniors to bond together over something Madison High School cherishes (athletics) and celebrate their final games as high school students. Whether this is executed by wearing sweatshirts with their partner’s names on the back or baking food before a big game, Spirit Squad keeps seniors interested in sports, each other, and the concept of spirit itself.

But the system is corrupt. Okay, maybe it is not as corrupt as prisons or select governments, but it cannot go without saying that the Spirit Squad System is not functional.

Here’s what I know:

1) Ideally, anyone can ask anyone else to be their Spirit Squad partner (ie, a girl can ask a male athlete; an athlete can ask a girl). I incorrectly thought that boys asked the girls. Instead, Spirit Squad partners are typically determined like the long-forgotten Sadie Hawkins’s dances: girls ask the boys… except the boys can say no and there’s really nothing in it for the girls.

2) Spirit Squad is just for boys. Yes, the girls get the apparel and the pride of wearing a boy’s name on the back of a sweatshirt, but the girls also have to bring and bake food for the boys and cheer them on at the games. The boys don’t get apparel but they also generally don’t support the female athletes.

3) Spirit Squad is for seniors only. That’s self-explanatory. From what I understand, however, people ask or “call” their partner as early as freshmen year. Various sophomore boys have already been asked by girls to be their partners. Isn’t that a little excessive? (They are also confused, as I was, about the whole pairing system.)

I’m going to avoid the sexist rant about Spirit Squad. I will say, however, that I don’t like the double standard between the boys and girls, or the fact that it’s a bit of a free-for-all to find a partner, or the fact that the entire idea of Spirit Squad has been whittled down to sweatshirts and food, when it really should be about support for our athletes.

Here’s the problem with Spirit Squad: there are a lot of athletes in our school. Madison is a big sports school and big sports schools need big support teams. So a lot of athletes need a lot of supporters. Where can we find these fans? The answer is within both the athletic community and the non-athletic community. Here’s where we strike a problem: there are only so many people, both athletic and non-athletic, who want to partake in Spirit Squad. Somewhere along the line, an athlete doesn’t have a partner or a person who wants to be involved doesn’t have an athlete. How do we solve this?

The simple solution is to just pair up all male and female athletes so that they support each other. But then we face the problem of non-athletes not being involved and thus feeling unappreciated. What about randomly pairing up both male and female athletes with anyone who wants a Spirit Squad partner?

This was the original system. Male and female athletes supported each other, but somewhere along the line, non-athletes became involved and drama began over who would be whose partner. Recently, the junior class began thinking about Spirit Squad for next year and chaos ensued regarding partners, confusion, and jealousy. The boys were at a loss of what to say to the multiple girls who asked to be their partners and the girls were disappointed when not 1 or 2 but 3 or 4 of their male friends were already “reserved” for next school year. Will Wraith, a junior, comments, “I think it’s funny that the girls are so obsessed with something that’s so unimportant”, clearly articulating how disinterested the boys are in who their partner actually is.

To put it quite simply, Spirit Squad is great in theory and terrible in practice. There is almost nothing in it for the girls. As Mrs. Bergen put it, “every year I hope it gets better and every year it gets worse. Girls are literally asking to bring the boys food and wear their names on sweatshirts. It’s demeaning.” And it is. There is no denying it.

I still like Spirit Squad. I don’t have a partner and honestly I don’t think that I’m going to find one, seeing as my friends are already taken, but I think it’s important that Spirit Squad exists. In a school that puts an immense emphasis on sports, we need an immense support team. We don’t have a Cheerleading Squad, which is a completely different issue, and in their stead rightly rests Spirit Squad.  My suggestion to the up-and-coming sports fans of MHS is to remember that Spirit Squad is meant for support, not glory, and spirit, not sweatshirts.