The history of cheerleading goes as far back as the late 1880's when the first organized, recorded yell was performed on an American Campus: "Ray, Ray' Ray! TIGER, TIGER, SIS, SIS, SIS! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! Aaaaah! PRINCETON, PRINCETON, PRINCETON!" Done in locomotive style, was the first seen and heard during a college football game.

    In 1884, Thomas Peebles, a graduate of Princeton University, took that yell, and the sport of [American] Football (actually derived from Rugby), to the University of Minnesota. It was from that campus that organized cheerleading came into being.

    Cheerleading, as we know it today, was initiated in 1898 by Johnny Campbell, an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, who stood before the crowd at a football game and directed them in a famous and still used yell. "Rah, Rah, Rah! Sku-u-mar, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!". And so cheerleading officially began on November 2, 1898.

    In the fall of 1919, some of America's greatest universities were just then becoming "great." For some reason, in those days, greatness was whether or not your university had a big football stadium. A stadium could accommodate large crowds, and large crowds helped to build good football teams, and the better your football team the more attention you could attract to your school. Attention was the name of the game, and if you could attract it, then your university could build itself into an important educational institution as well as being good at sports.

    It was a "do or die" situation for the University of Kansas. For years their football team the "Jayhawks" had been playing in rickety old McCook Stadium, which had seats for only 2,000 people. Very few of the "big football teams" would come and play at Kansas because the crowds were so small.

    Kansas had been invited to Lincoln, Nebraska, to play the nationally ranked University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. An awesome task for any football team, and especially so for the Jayhawks because the Cornhuskers outweighed the KU team by nearly twenty pounds per man.

    Head Coach Forrest Allen took his team to Nebraska and on a cold wet playing field, they played hard. In fact, they fought so well that the game's final score ended in a surprising tie 20-20. And KU might even have won the game if a touchdown in the final minute of play had not been called back by the Referee.

    The Jayhawks came back to Kansas on a tide of enthusiasm that had never before happened to them. They were greeted by thousands of cheering students as their train pulled into the depot.

    Realizing what the situation could mean, Shirley Windsor called various influential former KU students on the phone. He was asking for money to build a big stadium. After calls to Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City.... Shirley had been turned down cold.

    Rushing up the steps of the KU administration building two at a time, Shirley asked to see the Chancellor of the university. He said "Sir, if you would give your permission to stop all classes for one hour tomorrow morning, I think we could have the greatest pep rally this school has ever seen."

    The Chancellor gave his okay to the idea, and the next morning Shirley and his two fellow cheerleaders watched as the 4,000 students filed into Robinson Gymnasium.

    "Our team has given us a great victory" explained Shirley. "Now is the time to build KU's first giant stadium so we can begin a football tradition in Kansas. But our alumni in cities around Kansas have turned us down. Will you help?"

    After thirty minutes of rousing cheers and ceaseless noise, the 4,000 students pledged sixty Dollars per person of their own money (that was truly a lot in those days), and nearly a quarter of a million Dollars was raised in one short hour!

    Two years later, on another cold wet afternoon, KU played Nebraska again. This time in the brand-new Memorial Stadium - 30,000 seats! And one of America's great college sports traditions was born.

 Last Updated:

04/04/2025 19:04:09