San Rafael’s High School cheer team is starting in a new division after just winning their eighth national title at the 2025 USA Spirit Nationals competition. The varsity team has competed in the Co-Ed Varsity Show Cheer Advanced Non-Tumbling division for 8 years. However, SRHS Varsity cheer is moving back to being an all-girl team. Why is there a transition to a new division? The answer is a bit complex.
Traditionally, cheerleading is viewed as a female-dominated sport. However, this wasn’t the case until about World War II. The Atlantic article of How Cheerleading Went from Raucous and Male to Restrictive and Female, states: “During World War II, as men were pulled away from college and into military service, women in college began to take over cheerleading, and the nature of the sport began to change.”
With the draft of men going into World War ll, many programs shifted towards recruiting girls. According to the article, cheerleading was seen as “too masculine,” which made it harder for women to want to join any programs that were starting to become co-ed. The article explains that “Spectators started emphasizing cheerleaders’ physical attractiveness more than their athleticism.”
As the perception of cheerleading began to change, so did SRHS athletics. The exact moment of when it happened isn’t known, but, after comparing recent yearbooks to ones in the past decades, we are able to see a significant change.
The SRHS year book from the early 1900s called Searchlight, showcases a mix of different types of sports correlating with what cheer is today. Though past clubs didn’t necessarily resemble modern cheer, tumbling club and marching band were their versions of cheerleading.
SRHS’s cheer program today looks very different from how it used to be back then. With the majority of girls taking up the program, there’s been less interest in joining cheer from a guy’s perspective.
“It’s not as aggressive or fast-paced and entertaining to me at least. It’s a different kind of difficulty that’s more passive than football which is why I never thought about joining,” says junior Emilio Valencia.
Plenty of people have different types of commitments to other extracurricular activities already and some just don’t see the benefits of cheer. Cheer is a very time consuming sport that takes a lot of commitment which is why it’s not in an official season, it takes place year round.
Sophomore Tyler White says, “I was thinking about joining cheerleading since freshman year but I was never able to because of the amount of time commitment it took. It was also very difficult because cheer also overlapped with the track season.”
Due to the lack of male involvement in joining cheer, Shawna Hoch, the head coach of the cheerleading program, decided to have this upcoming year be an all girl team while still remaining in the advanced division.
Entering in a new division can be challenging for many coaches, but Hoch expresses enthusiasm for it because of how different and new it will all be. “Being able to go into a division without as much knowledge makes it really exciting because I won’t be able to anticipate the outcomes as easily,” says Hoch.
Hoch goes on to say “I love the idea of facing a new challenge because it creates new opportunities for us to be successful, not just in our wins, but also, as an all girl team and showing girls that they can do all the things that are male athletes have done previously.”
Freshman Ella Allen on the varsity team is also enthusiastic about this upcoming season. “I want to try again and improve even more because watching varsity last season, when I was on JV, and seeing how hard they worked made me really want to be a part of that community.”
Last season, the cheer program had some difficulties regarding people quitting which put the whole team to have a major setback. Despite the many challenges they faced, the whole program saw plenty of success, especially varsity who was able to bring home another National Title.
Sophomore Ryan Wolfe, who is on the varsity team, says, “I feel like it’s kind of scary being in a new division because we sort of had a good understanding of who we were up against and now we don’t really. But I still feel confident that we are going to be fine and be able to win again.”
“Because we have been doing co-ed for so long, everything is going to be a little unsure, but I think it’ll be a good opportunity to try something new,” says Allen.
Overall, the now, varsity all-girl team, although a bit uncertain of the new division, has made it clear they’re confident they will have a successful season.
