A lengthy inside look at a group of young high school women who fight for self-esteem and wider horizons as members of the Greenup County High School cheerleading team. This is no small matter—the Greenup County Musketeer cheerleaders have fielded nationally competitive teams for 20 years and have won the national championship eight times since 1981. They are the girls seen annually on ESPN in their green and gold uniforms at the finals in Orlando, Fla. The 1997 championship team was featured in one of the memorable milk mustache ads. McElroy, an award-winning journalist and husband of a cheerleading coach, tries to explore how, year after year, girls from a small, struggling Kentucky county working with an unpaid coach can grab the national spotlight. Through interviews with team members and their coaches, he paints a picture of a region where morality is both rigid (girls do not date until they are 16) and flexible (teen pregnancy is common); family values are both uncertain (alcohol and abuse take their toll) and humane (neighbors open their homes to neglected children); the economy is uneven; and the high school football team (also uneven) still gets more respect than the championship cheerleaders. These cheerleaders are not just jump and jiggle—they are athletes, practicing tumbling and balance routines that reflect the discipline of gymnastics. The team also provides a kind of social trampoline for young women who might otherwise never venture out of Greenup County—they bond, travel, learn discipline and the satisfaction of achievement. They also learn about disappointment, rejection, and pain. McElroy doesn’t quite seem to nail the “why” of this team’s continually outstanding performance—the head coach is clearly key, but tape recording her pep talks isn’t revealing enough. Still, the snapshots of the cheerleaders and the drama of their competitions lends enough suspense for readers to chime in: “Go, Greenup, Go.” (48 b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-84967-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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