Cheerleading OK’D at Calif. football games

SANFRANCISCO— After a spirited campaign, cheerleaders in California won the right Friday to return to high school football fields — and cheer.

Three days after the California Department of Public Health quietly banned cheerleading squads from attending sporting events, the agency reversed its decision Friday, bowing to parents, coaches and cheerleaders who chanted “Let us cheer!”

“Yay!” said elated mother Courtney Gomez, who said her ninth grader heard the news and “came running out of her room yelling, ‘cheer is back on!’”

The reversal was tucked into the agency’s daily news release on COVID-19 statistics, as a clarification that said “sideline cheer is an allowable sport” under state guidelines.

The agency has not provided any explanation of the rule change or the earlier ban, which made an apparent distinction between competitive cheerleading, which was allowed, and cheering on the sidelines of a football game. The Tuesday ban, which was inserted in a “Youth

Sports Q&A” on the agency’s website, said “sideline cheer, band, drumline or other supporting groups are not allowed to attend sporting events at this time.”

It struck many as bizarre, given that the state health agency had only just allowed cheerleading to resume along with football and other outdoor youth sports last month in much of the state.

Cheerleading coaches across the state called it confusing and unfair and kicked off a campaign asking parents to email public officials, sign online petitions and complain to the state department of health.

“I blasted out emails to every person I could,” said Gomez, whose daughter attends Capuchino High School in San Mateo County, south of San Francisco. Her daughter had only just returned to cheer at her first football game last week, when competition started up again.

The relaxed rules cleared the way for abbreviated spring versions of high school football, field hockey, gymnastics, water polo and other sports.