You Can't Make this stuff up: Armless, legless girl and wants to cheerlead

I will probably get flamed for saying this, but I am inclined to side with the school on this one. I just don't see how this girl can be a cheerleader. The moves required to be a cheerleader involve jumping, kicking, using your arms, etc. Should a school change their rules for a boy with no legs and put him on the baseball team?

 

Me, too. If any other girls were cut, then she doesn't deserve a spot.

 

I'm still kind of torn on this, but a couple of thoughts:

-- I have trouble taking the whole notion of the "tryouts" seriously, like they're searching for the most spirited girls who are best at cheering, and some people -- including the girl in question -- simply didn't make the cut. I guess I've missed the cheerleading squads with all the ugly-but-spirited girls on them, and it's strictly coincidental that cheerleading squads are invariably made up of the 10 cutest girls in the class.

-- I'm trying to picture a cheerleading squad with an armless, legless girl on it, and the image reminds me of the original BBC version of "The Office." A woman in a wheelchair is transferred to the office from another branch, and the boss insists on showing her off to visitors by asking "Have you met this little lady?" He thinks he'll look good for hiring a woman in a wheelchair, but it's obvious to everyone that he's trying to exploit her and hasn't even bothered to learn her name. The mental image of the limbless girl in a wheelchair front and center with the cheerleaders just seems very "have you met this little lady" to me... but then it's her idea, which complicates it.

 

Nice. Too bad this one passed.

I really the lawyers are going out on a limb with this one.

 

This had a chance to be one of those really heartwarming stories that ESPN eats right up.

 

Perfect sequel material:

Bring It On (film), a 2000 film about a high school cheerleading squad
Bring It On Again, a 2004 sequel
Bring It On: All or Nothing, a 2006 sequel
Bring It On: In It to Win It, a 2007 sequel
Bring It On: Fight to the Finish, a 2009 sequel

Bring it On: Hey, I'm Down Here Bitch, a 2011 sequel

 

Yeah, but she wouldn't win an ESPY, so they wouldn't care.

 

When did we begin to deform the entirety of secondary education around nonsense like this, and like football?

To side with the school in this, you have to take cheerleading very seriously as a sport.

 

No. You don't. You do, however, have to believe that people should get to keep what they earn. In this case, that applies to the girls who beat her out.

 

To side with the school, you have to offer at least some explanation why X made it and Y didn't. The school did that.

To side against the school, you have to offer at least some explanation why Y should make it and X shouldn't. So far all we have heard is "change the scoring rules" or "it's a good PR move" or, simply, sympathy.

It could be argued that the school did not press the Easy button ("What a great PR move!") and instead simply made the selections based on previous standards (which, fair or not, ARE the standards until they are formally changed). To do anything else would almost have to be called unfair.

 

What if you were the parent of the girl who got beat out by the girl with no arms or legs?

 

I'm not talking about the mechanics of fairness.

I'm talking about going all the way back to first principles, and asking 'What is cheerleading?"

Then working forward from that, explaining to me why certain people are excluded from certain extracurricular activities.