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More Christian schools opting for faith-based cheerleading
By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press Writer
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Bare midriffs. Short skirts. Bump-and-grind routines.
Cheerleading has strayed far from the 2-4-6-8 routines of yesteryear, and that can leave parochial school cheerleading squads wondering how to craft routines that fit their values without looking downright retro.
That's where Christian cheerleading camps come in. A growing number of Christian schools, put off by the sometimes-seductive dances and cheers taught at secular camps, are opting instead for faith-based camps and competitions. It's where Bible study meets basket tosses and the music doesn't have to be bleeped out.
Jaime Fulton, cheerleading coach at Western Christian High School in Covina, Calif., remembers going to regular cheerleading camps when she was in high school. When her Christian school squad got home, they'd have to rewrite many routines, putting them to music that didn't fit and taking out hip movements.
When she heard about the Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders — a Lawrenceville, Ga., company that mixes religious messages with cheerleading — Fulton signed up her 20-girl squad for a camp and found it a perfect fit.
"It's very different," she said. "I would never go back to a secular camp. What we're trying to teach our girls goes against all the media, all the sexual stuff and bad sportsmanship."
At FCC camps, Fulton said, cheerleaders learn they don't have to sacrifice modesty to have hip routines: "It's not dorky. It's not '80s cheerleading. They just take out the gross stuff."
It's an approach that's growing into big business for the two leading Christian cheerleading companies, FCC in Georgia and Christian Cheerleaders of America in Winston-Salem, N.C. FCC now works with 15,000 cheerleaders a year in faith-based camps and competitions, with a staff of 100 coaches. CCA teaches 7,000 cheerleaders a year and recently built a 27,000-square-foot gym.
"We felt that Christian schools needed somewhere to go that's just for them," said Rose Clevenger, founder and president of CCA. At secular camps, "they can feel uncomfortable with the dress code, or maybe they have inappropriate music. Typically cheerleaders look like sex symbols and don't dress appropriately."
The camps work just like secular ones, but with devotional time added in mornings and nights. Most of the instructors are college cheerleaders who went to Christian schools when they were younger, and they're encouraged to talk about their faith. They tell campers that cheering is a God-given talent that can spread Christian lessons.
"We think it can even be an act of worship," said John Blake, FCC's event coordinator. "Being excellent at what you do in any facet of life, that can be a testimony about your faith."
The wholesome approach isn't just to soothe parents. Cheerleaders from Christian schools say they've felt left out at regular cheerleading camps, either because their skirts are too long or their coaches veto the music. At Christian camps, they all fit in.
"There's not the pressure," said Tracy Handey, a 15-year-old cheerleader at Humble Christian School in Humble, Texas. Handey's squad went to a CCA camp, where no one snickered at their skirts that fall to 4 inches above the knee. "I like our uniforms because they don't show everything."
In addition to cleaner music and dancing, there's also a stronger focus on good sportsmanship at Christian camps, coaches said. Handey's coach, Vicki Howell, said that the growth of competitive cheerleading has led to more taunting and off-color cheers.
When her squad placed eighth at a recent competition, but won CCA's Spirit of Competition Award for good sportsmanship, she remembers telling her girls, "That's the only trophy you'll take into heaven with you."
"My goal is not just to coach cheerleading but to make well-rounded women," Howell said.
Cary Coleman, founder of FCC, said the company is doing so well it plans to expand into churches. Many churches already have softball or basketball teams, so why not recreational cheerleading?
"We're calling it 'impact cheerleading,' to impact your community through cheerleading," said Coleman. The first church squad will be assembled at a metro Atlanta Baptist congregation this fall, with more planned. Coleman envisions a day when cheerleaders can go through a faith-based program their entire careers, from learning to cheer at church as a pre-teen straight through high school or college.
The mixture of religion and cheerleading is a natural fit, he said, because while sometimes sports programs focus on culling a few superstars for professional athletics, everyone knows cheerleading isn't a career.
"They're not going to be doing it forever," Coleman said. "We're trying to teach kids to use their talents and abilities to glorify Christ, and that's something that will stay with them a long time, maybe their whole lives."
What's next? Fellowship of Christian Hooters Girls? Are there no lengths that we won't go to to make the world safe for our own?
I'm having trouble seeing the impact that this type of withdrawal is going to have on any community besides the christian 1. Seems like more of the same to me. Does anybody want to be salt & light anymore? Or do we all just want to find the place where we all fit in & feel comfortable?
What exactly is a 'secular camp?'
Anybody else got a problem with this?
More Christian schools opting for faith-based cheerleading
By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press Writer
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Bare midriffs. Short skirts. Bump-and-grind routines.
Cheerleading has strayed far from the 2-4-6-8 routines of yesteryear, and that can leave parochial school cheerleading squads wondering how to craft routines that fit their values without looking downright retro.
That's where Christian cheerleading camps come in. A growing number of Christian schools, put off by the sometimes-seductive dances and cheers taught at secular camps, are opting instead for faith-based camps and competitions. It's where Bible study meets basket tosses and the music doesn't have to be bleeped out.
Jaime Fulton, cheerleading coach at Western Christian High School in Covina, Calif., remembers going to regular cheerleading camps when she was in high school. When her Christian school squad got home, they'd have to rewrite many routines, putting them to music that didn't fit and taking out hip movements.
When she heard about the Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders — a Lawrenceville, Ga., company that mixes religious messages with cheerleading — Fulton signed up her 20-girl squad for a camp and found it a perfect fit.
"It's very different," she said. "I would never go back to a secular camp. What we're trying to teach our girls goes against all the media, all the sexual stuff and bad sportsmanship."
At FCC camps, Fulton said, cheerleaders learn they don't have to sacrifice modesty to have hip routines: "It's not dorky. It's not '80s cheerleading. They just take out the gross stuff."
It's an approach that's growing into big business for the two leading Christian cheerleading companies, FCC in Georgia and Christian Cheerleaders of America in Winston-Salem, N.C. FCC now works with 15,000 cheerleaders a year in faith-based camps and competitions, with a staff of 100 coaches. CCA teaches 7,000 cheerleaders a year and recently built a 27,000-square-foot gym.
"We felt that Christian schools needed somewhere to go that's just for them," said Rose Clevenger, founder and president of CCA. At secular camps, "they can feel uncomfortable with the dress code, or maybe they have inappropriate music. Typically cheerleaders look like sex symbols and don't dress appropriately."
The camps work just like secular ones, but with devotional time added in mornings and nights. Most of the instructors are college cheerleaders who went to Christian schools when they were younger, and they're encouraged to talk about their faith. They tell campers that cheering is a God-given talent that can spread Christian lessons.
"We think it can even be an act of worship," said John Blake, FCC's event coordinator. "Being excellent at what you do in any facet of life, that can be a testimony about your faith."
The wholesome approach isn't just to soothe parents. Cheerleaders from Christian schools say they've felt left out at regular cheerleading camps, either because their skirts are too long or their coaches veto the music. At Christian camps, they all fit in.
"There's not the pressure," said Tracy Handey, a 15-year-old cheerleader at Humble Christian School in Humble, Texas. Handey's squad went to a CCA camp, where no one snickered at their skirts that fall to 4 inches above the knee. "I like our uniforms because they don't show everything."
In addition to cleaner music and dancing, there's also a stronger focus on good sportsmanship at Christian camps, coaches said. Handey's coach, Vicki Howell, said that the growth of competitive cheerleading has led to more taunting and off-color cheers.
When her squad placed eighth at a recent competition, but won CCA's Spirit of Competition Award for good sportsmanship, she remembers telling her girls, "That's the only trophy you'll take into heaven with you."
"My goal is not just to coach cheerleading but to make well-rounded women," Howell said.
Cary Coleman, founder of FCC, said the company is doing so well it plans to expand into churches. Many churches already have softball or basketball teams, so why not recreational cheerleading?
"We're calling it 'impact cheerleading,' to impact your community through cheerleading," said Coleman. The first church squad will be assembled at a metro Atlanta Baptist congregation this fall, with more planned. Coleman envisions a day when cheerleaders can go through a faith-based program their entire careers, from learning to cheer at church as a pre-teen straight through high school or college.
The mixture of religion and cheerleading is a natural fit, he said, because while sometimes sports programs focus on culling a few superstars for professional athletics, everyone knows cheerleading isn't a career.
"They're not going to be doing it forever," Coleman said. "We're trying to teach kids to use their talents and abilities to glorify Christ, and that's something that will stay with them a long time, maybe their whole lives."
What's next? Fellowship of Christian Hooters Girls? Are there no lengths that we won't go to to make the world safe for our own?
I'm having trouble seeing the impact that this type of withdrawal is going to have on any community besides the christian 1. Seems like more of the same to me. Does anybody want to be salt & light anymore? Or do we all just want to find the place where we all fit in & feel comfortable?
What exactly is a 'secular camp?'
Anybody else got a problem with this?
posted by lee at 2:47 AM
4 Comments:
Brother, I would just go to Hooters for the wings. The same for a football game. I go for the game not the cheerleaders.
In all seriousness, I too wonder, what's the deal? I have noticed that most anything labeled "Christian" usually has very little to do with Jesus' message to the world.
There are folks dying in the streets from starvation, poverty, and hate and many are worried about how one dances at a football game? For the life of me, I doubt Jesus could care less.
Anyhow, let me know when the Christian cheerleader calendar comes out. We can sell them at the church to raise funds for a mission trip to Dallas to work with former cheerleaders who have struggled to break free from a life of dancing nearly naked in pubic.
Pro 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
1Pe 1:16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
2Cr 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you,
These verses are true, but I'm left wondering why the point is still missed. You may choose to raise your kids in a vacuum or the slums of the christian ghettos, but how is this anything but unbiblical?
John 17:15
15Just as I didn't join the world's ways.
I'm not asking that you take them out of the world
But that you guard them from the Evil One.
If we are holy & have retreated so far into our own communities that the world doesn't see it, what good does it do?
Romans 10:14
14But how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven't heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them?
I long for the day when our separation is quite apparent by our actions & motives of heart rather than the very cowardice act of physical removal of ourselves from the very world that Christ came to save...
So go ahead...it's your right after all, feel free to light another candle on the sun...I'd rather find the deepest, darkest hole for mine...
If the Christians are meeting at Hooters for a bible study, in an effort to bring light into a dark world... why would I judge? Jesus himself brought the gospel to the Prostitutes and other sinners, where they were. "While we were yet sinners, he died for us..."
However, if they join in the party atmosphere at Hooters, if they pretend that the sexual and alchoholic content doesn't matter... if they stumble one of God's children... they will not be bringing a candle to a dark world, but will be adding darkness to their own. Tread carefully. Walk as children of the light.
As far as the christian cheerleading camp goes... I am tired of people insisting that we must throw our teenagers in with the wolves so that they can bring the gospel to the other kids. Teenagers do not even have the maturity to reject the influences of their peers until well into their twenties. Most christian teenagers experiment with a great number of things themselves. Just where is this herd of teenage Christian pathlighters supposed to come from, if we are not raising them up in the way they should go?
If a Christian teen looks like, acts like, dances like, cheers like and speaks like a secular kid... she probably IS a secular kid!
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