No Cringe for Cheerleaders
May 20, 2026
The spring semester at Bard MBA for Sustainability wrapped up last weekend — a bittersweet time for me as I watch the students I’ve come to know over the past 2-3 years prepare for graduation and move beyond the classroom to the next phase of their journey. As we said our goodbyes and made plans to stay in touch, I picked up on the term “cheerleader” being used often to describe my support. It was meant in a positive way and always with gratitude but I couldn’t help but find the term a bit cringy. It conjures up the image of a vapid, unserious, nonessential accessory. Cheerleaders are quite literally on the sidelines, not involved in the game, they’re not making things happen. Or are they….?
First, full disclosure: I was a cheerleader for a couple years in high school. Only because I didn’t want to play basketball and there was no other winter varsity sport for girls in my small-town high school in central Ohio back in the early 1980s. Cheerleading kept me at least tangentially connected to a sport until soccer started up again in the spring. I don’t often tell people I was a cheerleader because I suppose I’m kind of ashamed of it. It felt like a subordinate role, not a “true” sport…and I love sports. In my first year of high school, I caused a stir when I joined the boys soccer team where I played for two years until the school finally realized it should have a girls team and started one my junior year. To be clear, I didn’t set out to play on the boys team to make a statement for womens’ rights, I did it because I loved playing soccer. It let me be the tomboy I knew myself to be (and still am) at a time when Title IX was fairly new and girls remained mostly relegated to sports-in-skirts like field hockey and tennis and…cheerleading.
So, as an adult, I’ve long beat myself up about cheerleading because it felt like a cop out. A step backward. A capitulation to the patriarchy. No wonder I still cringe at being called a cheerleader. And yet today so many years later, people are using the term to describe me in a positive way. People who I care about and value as wise and thoughtful friends and colleagues appreciate me as their personal cheerleader. So it can’t be all bad, right?
Let’s unpack this a litle further. Why would these folks see me as a cheerleader? I do have a tendency to enthusiastically encourage those students who are contemplating innovative, entrepreneurial, non-traditional career paths. I do so knowing that such career paths are challenging, even risky. But also — for the right person — perfect. By “right person” I mean someone with a vision and the courage to follow it. Someone who very likely would find themself wholly unsatisfied, stifled even, in a more traditional job. I do realize I’m describing myself here, although I didn’t discover this about myself until I was nearly 40 years old and almost 20 years into a fairly typical career path climbing the corporate ladder. That was the only path that I knew to exist. Until a fateful day when the corporate ladder became a yawning abyss and I was teetering on the edge. A beloved advisor helped me see that I had a choice: I could cling to the edge of the abyss or I could take a leap and fly. So much gratitude for that small act of cheerleading that changed my life.
As I’ve evolved over the second 20 years of my career into an entrepreneur and unconventional business leader, it’s fair to say I’ve come across more doomsayers than cheerleaders. It’s been a lonely and scary path much of the time. But it’s also where I know I belong. So maybe that’s why I readily pluck up the spirit and encourage those who are considering a similar path. I want them to know they’re not alone and to help them see opportunity where others see fear. I want them to not waste time in a subordinate role to someone else’s dream and go find a way to bring their dream into being.
So I’m changing my tune about cheerleaders. Yes, we are on the sidelines but just because we’re not on the field doesn’t mean we’re not involved in the game. I’ll stop cringing now and embrace the role.