Three cheers for tradition

By SCOTT PURKS
Published September 14, 2005

Jesuit used to have boy cheerleaders, which might make a little sense since Jesuit is an all-boys school. Trouble was, no one paid much attention to those cheerleaders.

That's why in the 1960s Jesuit officials decided they needed girls.

And that's when cheerleaders from Academy of the Holy Names appeared on the sidelines wearing Jesuit uniforms.

Forty years later, the girls are doing the same thing they always did.

"Having fun," Jesuit/AHN captain Mallory Garcia said. "I really look forward to Friday nights, cheering and goofing around with my friends.

"It's nothing but fun."

Garcia, for one, grew up cheering for all-star squads where the premium is on winning competitions.

"But," she said, "I like cheering for Jesuit so much more. The crowd cheers with you. They get into it and that helps the team. It's nothing like (the cheerleading movie) Bring It On where you're just cheering for yourself."

What it is, is Garcia and 20 girls yelling with hundreds of fans, including the Blue Tide, which involves 30 or so blue-painted Jesuit boys wearing rainbow wigs and Viking horns.

Behind the Blue Tide you'll find folks such as Patty Bohannan, Academy's director of alumni relations, who cheered for the Tigers in the mid 1970s, which was, she said, "the best time ever."

"Some of my best friends for life were on the squad with me," said Bohannan, who cheered with Terrin Few, who dated Jesuit quarterback Rich McKay, the former Tampa Bay Buc and current Atlanta Falcons general manager.

In the early 1980s Bohannan was in Few's wedding to McKay, and not long after Few was a bridesmaid for Bohannan.

"But I didn't marry a boy from Jesuit," said Bohannan, whose daughter, Kayleigh, cheered for Jesuit before graduating last spring. "I did, though, date Jesuit boys exclusively in high school. You know, they're our brother school and we're their sister school. That's just the way it was."

And is.

"We know we're a part of something special," senior cheerleader Kayleigh McEnany said. "It is, really, so much fun."

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 09:36:40]