“Give Me a W!”: The Team that Just Made Cheerleading History
Texas Southern University just became the first HBCU to win a National Championship in cheerleading
For 364 days of the year, cheerleaders root for others. They lead chants. They stir the crowd into a frenzy. They help the team.
But for one day, cheerleaders get all the attention to themselves.
Earlier this month, on that one particularly special day, we had a little extra reason to cheer for them. That’s because when Texas Southern University, from Houston, took the stage at the National Cheer Association Championships in Daytona Beach, Fla. on April 7, they were looking to make history. And once judges announced results, TSU became the first HBCU to win an NCA national championship since the event began 75 years ago.
The Tigers’ co-ed, 22-person team performed a routine complete with signs and flags and “Tex the Tiger,” who I was delighted to learn was named an All-American mascot this past year (There’s also a mascot national championship, and this year, Buzz the Bee from Georgia Tech edged out Texas Tech’s Raider Red by less than half a point for the title). TSU’s team did flips and splits and handsprings. “T! S! U!” they chanted, over and over.
“Fifty percent of me was confident,” said head coach Shontrese Comeaux. “The other 50 percent was like, ‘Oh my god, we really did it.’”
TSU scored a 96.1 for the routine (which you can watch here). Second place, Niagara University, came in at a whopping 11 points behind, with 85.2. It was a rout.
"When you bring an HBCU to a competition that's not really meant for us, we're going to come out and strive for greatness," TSU cheer captain Hailey Walker said. "We're going to go in there with our hearts knowing that we're going to come out with a win."
Trophy in hand, the Tigers stormed out of the auditorium and onto the Florida beach, running straight into the Atlantic Ocean to celebrate with their new hardware in hand. But the celebration didn’t last very long. Tryouts for next year’s team begin today, and the journey to a title defense is underway.
"We're still having to break those barriers and be the first, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I want to make sure that we set the precedent and make sure that we inspire more and do more in the community,” Comeaux said.
There’s a cliché image we have of cheerleaders—that they’re petite and blonde and overwhelmingly, white. It’s an image that’s been force fed to us over and over, in movies, TV shows, and books. Yet Black cheerleaders have a long and storied history in the sport—with roots in the Civil Rights movement.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, many schools wouldn’t let Black students join their cheer teams. As a result, protests erupted around the country: there was a two-day strike in Pennsylvania involving 80 students to “inform the school officials that they resented the fact that school did not have any Negro Cheerleaders or Majorettes,” and a 1,300-student boycott of Madison, Wisc. high schools to demand half the city’s cheerleaders be Black. Once in the late 1960s, the local government of St. Petersburg, Fla. refused to allow a college football bowl game to be played because the teams had integrated cheer squads. Rather than capitulate, the teams cancelled the game.
Vivian Stringer would become a Hall of Fame basketball coach at Rutgers who won over a thousand games in her career. Earlier in life, she sued her high school to integrate the cheer squad. “I never wanted to be a cheerleader for the sake of being a cheerleader,” Stringer said. “I wanted to be on the sidelines to I could encourage the boys to do what they need to do. What I was really doing was taking one step closer to coaching.” It was always bigger than just another chant and routine.
And so, as TSU cheered their way to a nearly perfect score, it wasn’t just a crowning moment for a team with big dreams. It was a story decades in the making. And it’s a story that will continue to unfold for decades to come.
"The importance of bringing it back to Houston is to show Black boys and Black girls that are interested in cheer we are inspirational to them, and they can do it too," Comeaux said. "With us being the first, heavy is the head that wears the crown. What we want to do is inspire more Black and Latino cheerleaders to come to an HBCU or just to cheer competitively."
How could you not cheer for that?
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