Cheerleading Can Be Tough Business
(A bitter college rivalry gets out of hand)
Screen 1 of 2When I was attending Western, its football stadium was located between the physical education building (later converted to a library and named after Miss Margie Helm) and J. Whit Potter Hall, a dormitory for women students. The playing field itself was on a filled-in area which earlier had been the floor of a limestone rock quarry--the same quarry mentioned in the final story in Volume V of this series. The seating section for spectators, which had been built on the wall of the old quarry, provided a beautiful panoramic view of fertile farm lands to the south between Bowling Green and Woodburn. On a clear day, a person sitting in the upper part of the stadium could see almost to Franklin--twenty miles away.
During two of my three years as a student at Western, I was one of the college's cheerleaders, along with Ezzell Welbourn, Bill Bass, and Sam Milner. (All of us are shown in the photograph on the next page.) Leading cheers for the football team was certainly vigorous and demanding exercise, but it was also fun and we enjoyed it--most of the time, that is. The event about to be described, one of those times it wasn't fun, is a memorable one for me.
At a particular football game played in Western's stadium between our team and a team from a college located at Kalamazoo, Michigan, our usually routine duties as cheerleaders turned suddenly into a very dangerous activity.
The rivalry between these two schools (Western Kentucky and Western Michigan) had been a bitter one for several years, and as it turned out this game played at Bowling Green before a capacity crowd did nothing to improve the relationship.
It was in the third quarter. The score was tied, seven - seven, and the blocking and tackling had become vicious, almost savage like. Even though a large number of penalties had been assessed against both teams during the game, the officials were gradually losing control. Tension was high, tempers short, both on the field and in the stands.
My fellow cheerleaders and I were on the running track between the spectators and the playing field, doing our best to encourage an already vocal crowd to yell more and louder in behalf of our team, when the real trouble began. Unseen or at least ignored by the referee, one of the visiting players purposely kicked the head of a Western lineman after he had been knocked down in a rough and tumble running play. Then another member of our team, highly incensed by what had just happened, took a violent swing at the opposing player who had committed the foul. The referee saw this action and was about to eject our player, when members of both teams began fighting--first just those on the playing field, but within seconds, all the players on both sidelines swarmed to the aid of their comrades. In the wild confusion that followed, a Michigan substitute picked up one of the metal poles used for marking yardage and began waving it wildly toward any Western player he could reach. By this time, the officials had lost all control of the game. Everything was in chaos.
The cheerleaders were angry and frustrated, but since all of us were outweighed by the players and were without helmets or pads, we knew we could not do anything to right the wrongs done or even to help stabilize the situation. But at this point, a decision was made for us.
Large numbers of spectators--particularly Western students, began jumping over the front rails of the stands and pouring onto the playing field to join the fray; and like a wild herd of stampeding buffaloes, they swept the cheerleaders before them like toys.
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