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Cheer!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders |  | Author: Kate Torgovnick
Publisher: Touchstone
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Seller: thebookguyz
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 182287
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 1416535977
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.64
EAN: 9781416535973
ASIN: 1416535977
Publication Date: March 10, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
CHEER! is the Inspiration for the CW's Hot New Series, HELLCATS, Starring Alyson Michalka and Ashley Tisdale. Think cheerleading is just pom-poms, "gimme an 'R,'" and pleated skirts? Not anymore. Take an exhilarating trip through the rough-and-tumble world of competitive college cheerleading.... College cheerleaders are extreme athletes who fly thirty feet in the air, build pyramids in which a single slip can send ten people crashing to the ground, and compete in National Championships that are won by hundredths of a point. Cheer! is a year-long odyssey into their universe, following three squads from tryouts to Nationals. Meet the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjack cheerleaders from Nacogdoches, Texas, whoseem destined to win their fifth National Championship in a row -- until they are shaken by the departure of their longtime coach. Fall in love with the Southern University Jaguars from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an African-American team hoping to raise the $17,000 needed to travel to Nationals and transform their near win several years ago into a Cinderella victory. Root for the University of Memphis All-Girl cheerleaders from Tennessee -- a team that continually struggles for the same respect Coed teams get -- when their quest for a national title is threatened by injuries and dropouts. Along the way, meet unforgettable characters like Sierra, a cheerleading prodigy who has never lost a competition; Doug, who is in his eighth year as a college cheerleader; and Casi, one of the few female bases who can lift anothercheerleader on her own. These are people who risk horrifying injuries on a daily basis, battle demons like eating disorders and steroid use, and form intense bonds. In the immersive tradition of Friday Night Lights, Cheer! is a captivating, all-access journey into a deeply absorbing world.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
 An Emotional Experience August 8, 2010
Michael Griswold (Rockford, USA)
Color me surprised, I actually had an emotional experience from a book about three teams of competitive cheerleaders. Before this book, I'd rarely taken the time to think about cheerleading competitive or otherwise. I actually just picked up this book because I heard the new CW show Hellcats is based at least somewhat on this book. But it blew me away, I read it in like two or three days. Torgovnick takes the reader on a journey following the Memphis All Girl, Stephen F. Austin Co-ed, and Southern squads through their successes, failures, and near misses. Something happened to me throughout this book, I found myself lost in the pages hoping that Southern would miraculously find more people for their squad, or that Sierra would recover from her concussion and skull fracture (I stopped for several hours at that point.) I even found myself wanting SFA to take home the cheerleading title because Torgovnick made me as the reader feel emotionally invested in these people. That is the mark of an excellent writer and journalist. One had critiqued that she let herself become part of the book at some points, which is bad for journalism. To feel is to be human and after hanging out with these girls, I don't know how anyone would not find themselves becoming emotionally invested in these teams, even on the small level Torgovnick does.
There is also something sad about "Cheer" from the stories of Mary and Ashley who where doing cocaine and anorexic respectively because they weren't thin enough to be cheerleaders. Even the successful cheerleaders seem to speak of cheerleading as a sickness or addiction at some points like towards the end of one the sections on Memphis, I believe one of the girls passes a twelve year old in full cheerleading uniform and says something like "Sometimes, I just want to walk over to her and tell her to get out while she still can." This certainly isn't the picture of the smiling never ending ball of pep that I always had running through my head...
 4 cheers! June 21, 2010
J. Garza
i really loved this book! it takes you into the lifes of the cheerleaders as if u were right there with them. i really recommend this book even if your not into cheerleading.
More than grins and pep June 5, 2009
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
The cheerleader is the quintessential American stereotype--usually blonde, bubbly, and tenacious, yet also snobbish and popular. Cheer! shatters the stereotype, providing moving and realistic stories of cheerleaders both female and male, both black and white, as they navigate this much-maligned, yet dangerous and rewarding sport. Torgovnick admits her acceptance of the stereotype, and gamely sifts through the anecdotes told during her research into the world of the American cheerleader with patience and a surprising lack of judgment. Former cheerleaders will recognize their tribulations and triumphs in this book, and non-cheerleaders will gain an understanding of what it takes to lead the crowd, and why cheerleaders are indeed important and prove that this is a sport. Besides peeling back the layers that encompass the cheer culture, Cheer! is also a social commentary of America as Torgovnick follows the cheerleaders of Southern University, a historically black college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the double-edged sword of being talented yet lacking resources to compete with their mostly white counterparts, and also exposes the troubling health risks taken by female and male cheerleaders to remain competitive. Written in an engaging and informative style, Cheer! is amply provided with photographs, and is topped off with a study guide that will force you to look at the sport through new eyes. More than just a book on cheerleading, Cheer! takes its place amongst many of today's best sports exposes.
Reviewed by Angela Tate
Interesting entree into an unfamiliar world May 6, 2009
Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com)
In Cheer!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders, Kate Torgovnick follows three cheerleading teams during the 2006-07 season, from tryouts in the early spring of 2006 to the Nationals about a year later. The Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks from Nacogdoches, Texas are the team to beat, hoping to win the NCA College Nationals for the fifth year in a row. The underdogs--or at least the underfunded--are the Southern University Jaguars from Baton Rouge. Their team is perennially strapped for cash and can't count on having the money to make it to Nationals, however good they may be. The third team Torgovnick follows is an all-girl team, the University of Memphis Tigers.
I love a well-written non-fiction book because it can introduce a reader to wholly unfamiliar worlds. There aren't many subjects less familiar to me than college cheerleading, so Torgovnick's book is eye-opening. Cheerleaders, I learned, are active throughout the year rather than only seasonally, as other sports. Cheering thus implies a big time commitment, and the cheerleaders covered by Torgovnick are very serious indeed about what they do. For most of them, academics are beside the point: many are at school exclusively for the sport, and they selected their colleges based on the reputation of their cheerleading squads. Cheering is also a very dangerous sport. This isn't the pom pom-thrusting, "Give me an S!" sort of cheering that most of us probably think of as cheerleading, but its high-octane, acrobatic cousin, in which too-thin girls are lofted atop three-person-high pyramids and tossed around by burly males. More than one of the cheerleaders covered in the book were injured during the 2006-07 season.
Torgovnick devotes a lot of ink in her book to detailing specific routines, blow-by-blow descriptions of practics and competitions:
"Behind them, Sierra steps into a basket toss and flies up, kicking a leg out and flipping back down to where James Brown and the rest of her spotters cradle her safely. Facing the back of the mat, she shuffles and whips into two back handsprings. She sails into a Full, landing front and center on the mat. This tumbling pass, called a Two to Full, is extremely hard, especially for women. After she lands it flawlessly, she shoots two imaginary guns at the audience with a wink."
These sections were not very interesting to me, but would presumably entertain cheerleading aficionados among Torgovnick's readers. (While the author defines the various moves the cheerleaders make, they remain difficult for me to imagine. One wishes at times that the book could be embedded with video clips.) Readers like me who are not intimately acquainted with the sport might prefer that 50 or 100 pages of description were lopped off the narrative. Still, Torgovnick manages to hold our interest because we are sufficiently invested in the individuals she profiles to want them to succeed.
-- Debra Hamel
Great Book November 26, 2008
Mina Marsow
This book is interesting and informative. If you are a cheerleader or not this book will give you an inside look on the SPORT of cheerleading and the work that goes behind the smiles and poms.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
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