Leading off today: With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel ...
Where have you gone Jaime Escalante?
A school district's cheerleaders turn their lonely eyes to you.
The Rochester City School District is cutting funding for competitive cheerleading programs at its high schools,
WROC-TV reported this week. Game Day cheerleading programs are not affected by the decision.
Though RCSD school teams have produced generally dismal results at Section 5 competitions, parents are lamenting the loss of an extracurricular activity they say is important to their daughters.
"The whole situation is just sad, devastating," said Afikeyia Hargraves, whose daughter, La'Tavonia, is a senior at East High and in her sixth year of cheerleading.
Kaysia Hart, founder of Roc City Elite Youth Cheerleading, said the district's decision will gut participation. She proposes combining the RCSD's four competitive cheerleading squads into one while allowing individual schools to maintain their sideline programs during basketball season.
"Most of our teams are majority minority, and it's such a beautiful thing, and we don't want to see those programs not being able to compete because we're already under-represented in this sport because it is such an expensive sport," Hart said.
The school district issued a statement to the TV station:
"The Rochester City School District recognizes that the decision to discontinue competitive cheerleading is disappointing for students and families who value the program. While competitive cheerleading is no longer offered, we are expanding sideline cheerleading opportunities at the school level, allowing more students to participate and represent their schools at athletic events.
"We understand the importance of these experiences to our students and remain committed to providing meaningful opportunities for participation in school athletics."
Tying Jaime Escalante, competitive cheerleading, and lacrosse together
To the uninitiated, Jaime Escalante's extraordinary dedication to his students was the inspiration for "Stand and Deliver," a 1988 movie that earned Edward James Olmos an Academy Award nomination.
Escalante left private industry to work at a Los Angeles high school, where he met resistance from the faculty for wanting to teach calculus to students, many of whom lacked a strong background in mathematics.
His unconventional instructional shortcuts led to the Educational Testing Service suspecting cheating after a disproportionate number of Escalante's students scored well on the AP exam despite making identical errors on some answers. The teacher and his students were vindicated when the exam was administered a second time -- this time under tight supervision -- and the results were the same.
So, what does that have to do with competitive cheerleading in Rochester? Well, let's start with boys lacrosse.
More so than just about any other sport, high school lacrosse programs are destined to fail without a feeder system that begins in lower grades. Acquiring the stick skills and learning the nuances of the game take time and patience.
Despite obstacles that included a dearth of youth programs, the Rochester City School District made a push into the sport in the mid-1960s, and Jefferson High stuck with it for more than a decade.
East High briefly revived the sport 45 years ago, and then RCSD lacrosse disappeared until East fielded a team in 2018 and then formed East United with Eastridge High in neighboring Irondequoit the following spring.
The Eagles don't play a high-level schedule, but they have clawed their way to respectability after a post-pandemic reset. They are 28-38 since the start of the 2023 season, including an 11-6 mark in 2023.
Yes, the collaboration with a suburban school (one without much of a recent record of success) has helped, but East United lacrosse is proof of concept that city kids can succeed in a sport that is difficult to master.
That brings us to cheerleading. The difference between competitive cheerleading, which the RCSD just announced is cutting, and Game Day cheerleading is the difference between night and day.
Whereas Game Day cheerleading consists primarily of sideline support and brief on-court routines during basketball timeouts, some aspects of competitive cheerleading are comparable to gymnastics, with professionally choreographed dance steps thrown in for good measure.
The scoring at tournaments, including sectionals and the NYSPHSAA championships, is broken down into several categories, with the points in each comprising a final score.
Quite frankly, the RCSD teams have been non-entities in sectionals. Last winter, East, Wilson, and Monroe/School Without Walls, brought up the rear in a field of 12 Class B teams, School of the Arts was 14th out of 14 in Class C, and Edison Tech was 11th of 11 in the co-ed division.
In 2025, Edison edged one school in co-ed competition, and the other RCSD schools finished behind the rest of the field in their respective classes. In 2024, the three RCSD teams all brought up the rear again.
You can go back another decade and the results aren't much different. In that respect, it's apparent that competitive cheerleading success is an uphill struggle and the RCSD teams haven't moved beyond base camp.
But does that justify throwing in the towel? If the issue is a lack of qualified coaches or some systemic breakdown that makes going forward impossible, then the decision might be justified.
But if the RCSD administration's decision is rooted in finances or simply in a lack of success, then the temperature in the room starts getting uncomfortable. In many sports -- for both boys and girls -- the district fields a single team consisting of three to five schools and still finishes at or near the bottom of regular season and sectional standings. Cross country would be one of the first sports to drop, with softball and tennis close behind.
