For the last 6 months or so I have been somewhat obsessed with sports and adolescence in my work - ever since meeting photographer Ferenc Suto. Last night worked on a poem on cheerleading of all topics and discovered many interesting things about the "spirit industry". It started in the 1800s in Minnesota and was spearheaded by a young medical student who believed that "organized cheering" for the school football team, the gophers, could help inspire wins. Cheering didn't really take off until the 1940s and Lawrence Herkimer, a teenager growing up in Dallas. Lawrence had a stuttering problem but excelled at gymnastics and found that when he helped to lead the cheer, he never stuttered. So the origination of cheerleading is interestingly enough with men, considering that in the years since it has become a very female oriented activity - though in the last ten years or so, it seems that men are getting reintroduced back into it, albeit with some stigma. At my high school, Leonard Avila - a former speed freak and dealer cleaned up and became 1 of 3 guys on our school's cheerleading team. I'm convinced Leonard did it so he could pick up girls, literally. Herkimer went on to establish a number of cheerleading associations which have grown into million dollar businesses. He even has a jump named after him: the "herkie".