What's wrong with Americans?!?

Stories like this make me want to drive to Omaha and just SCREAM at the entire group... but then I would probably be arrested.

Like lots of girls she didn't make the squad. So if a kid in a wheelchair tries out for the fucking football team or gymnastics, that kid should make it on the team.

Fucking absurd.

Man, that is just so fucking ridiculous.

Some people seem to want to treat people who are in wheelchairs or deaf or blind or whatever as if they are made of glass.

That they should be protected from normal disappointments.

Being raised like that turns people into assholes.

Saw an interview with a now grown women who was a double amputee of both arms. Her arms had to be amputated when she was a kid....I don't remember why. And this was an amputation near the shoulder.

But she said the best thing that happened out of all that was that her parents didn't treat her as "special" or "fragile" in any way. As a matter of fact her first day back from the hospital she was put on dish wash duty with her siblings. Same as always.

"But...How can I...?"

"Figure it out."

I know the people of Aurora and they are fair..

and reasonable accommodation should be offered.

been accommodated? What about trying out for the debate team by an autistic child?

i doubt a severely physically disadvanged child could make the cheersquad. hell, i have all my limbs and didn't make it, either.

AND: in HS back in '78 our sister school had a kid with MD. Chuck. He joined the speech team and could barely speak understandably...or hold his head up straight. Or gesture. Wheelchair bound, and dependent on people pushing it for him...

He competed anyway. Reading prose. It was painful and courageous.

By senior year he COULD hold his head up, could gesture with his arms. COULD roll his own chair with his arm power. Could speak clearly enough...

They paired him with their best actor, dramatic duet, a 5 minute cut from Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Chuck played the father.

They went to STATE!

On their own merit. Seriously.

Our team, the current and future stae champion team (we were frikking fantastic), on hearing at Regional Awards that Chuck and Rick had placed and were going to state finals, cheered them louder than we ever cheered ourselves.

It was AWESOME.

done, they should be done even it it stretches the limits sometime.

Regrading cheer leading requirements:Those squads are usually made up of students that are skilled gymnasts. If the handicapped child had been selected, she couldn't have participated in much of their activities.

wanna spread the school spirit but aren't being scouted by Bela Karoli.

and i don't mean as a matter of law, at this point.

what i mean is that this group is probably the most impoverished group in the nation, the most unemployed, the most UNDERUTILIZED, at a time when this country needs more help than ever.

and working to see that people from all facets and varying abilities are included in all sorts of areas, in ways, perhaps that are difficult to even comprehend, will make our nation better.

just like it was inconceivable at one time, not so long ago that a black man with a name like Barack Obama could be elected president, a lot of things that are hard to conceive are ultimately quite do-able in the long run.

and the funny thing is that all the decades and centuries of work that were an important part of making sure it could happen --all those efforts made us better as a nation for trying.

all i'm asking is that just because you can't conceive of it, don't shut it down.

the accommodations the parents and school district made were not the end of this story --they are a beginning. like the other poster has responded to you, the reason i'm writing this is to get you to think bigger, grander.

i'm sure there will be a time, maybe in our lifetimes when sports will be played by people you can't even conceive of now and on teams most would think are impossible today.

cheer leading squad. There are NO students, anywhere, who have no arms or legs, participating
on any of the active sports that require running, catching, hitting or body contact.

Please spare me the "I must be clueless" insults.

If you have in mind some sort of "mascot" or physically inactive type of status, then state what you have in mind.

..read the whole article.

She tried out. She didn't make it. Just like every other able-bodied kid who tried out & didn't make the cut.

An honorary position = kind and generous, but shouldn't be mandatory.

Hell, why not sue the IOC for her not gaining a spot in Olympic women's waterpolo? IOC was way more money, and they might get comped a trip to London in their settlement.


Grifterish, imo.

My point is that this is not a sport in the traditional sense that you are better or faster at a game or a race, but a cheerleading squad, which is really a more democratic effort. After all, their rationale is not to win a game but to cheer the supporters of the team. They aren't sinking the ball in the basket or in the end zone. So there is a difference.

She is a representative of the student body. She should qualify for the cheerleading squad. And she also sends a very good message of acceptance of people with disabilities, who so often live in the shadows because of people who self righteously proclaim their "insufficiency" based on a false equation between cheerleading and a team sport.

Don't assume that she would have made the cut if not for her handicap. Cheer leading is not open to all students, only those who do very well at trials. Therefore the mere fact of her not making the squad is not proof of discrimination.

I'm an amputee, and I would never have tried out for the football team, and if I did, they'd be right to tell me I don't have what it takes.

It would be a great story if she'd made the team, but it's not a tragedy that she didn't.

The young woman just didn't make the team.

I hope the cheer squad will take into account her obvious enthusiasm and find a place for her in their routine, even if its only at select home games.

... would want to earn their spot legitimately and despise pity above all else.

Granted, most of the disabled folks I know were able bodied at one point but that's my $.02.

Disappointment makes you grow.

can physically do instead of out of reach goal? As a job, this girl will not be able to do physical labor in the same way another adult will. Why not hone the skills she has. I understand that most girls want to be the popular cheerleader, maybe she can be the
President of her class, etc. Channel her energies where she can succeed and feel positive about herself.

"Julia also plays percussion in the school's pep band and marching band."

There's something she can do that's active that wouldn't have to be simplified to the point of being meaningless.

Why can't we see the beauty in people with disabilities instead of nastily comparing them to clumsy people, or inadequate people?

I don't get it. I really don't. Why can't she be just as an important voice for her team as anyone else? Plus, she represents yet another community in our diverse country of communities. What is wrong with including her, instead of making odious comparisons to fully able people who are clumsy?

This is just plain WRONG.

You're seeing sensationalism where there is none. She was denied entry to the cheerleading squad. How do you know it was because she was disabled? Maybe she wasn't bloody good enough, like I'm sure multiple other girls weren't. Jesus christ.

I didn't think I was, and I kept practicing and I kept trying out. But evidently I wasn't good enough. Or something. And really wanting it just wasn't enough. I didn't have the skill.

Lots of people try out for things and are disappointed in high school.

When I was in my twenties I worked for someone very successful who was in his mid-thirties the first time he applied for something and was turned down. Up till then I don't think he had ever not been first in his class. I don't think he was ever turned down for a date, ever didn't get a scholarship, ever wasn't valedictorian, or didn't get the job he applied for.

Getting rejected for a highly competitive grant in his mid-thirties was devastating... but only because he really had no previous experience of it in his life. Its not always a good thing to be so successful. You expect that things will always be easy for you, and at some point that stops. You get into a league of equals and somebody else beats you.

There was an indirect, if not direct, meaning there. Why else would it have been there?

All I am asking is why can't disabled people represent their own kind of "cheerleading"? I think that is a good thing. Why not?

just about everything you came to accept in life. This is in no way comparable to being rejected for a highly competitive grant. It just isn't.

He had the girls, was the quarterback of the football team and a star of the basketball team. He was also quite bright and graduated near the top of the class. He applied for and was accept by the University of Michigan.

Some years later I was chatting with another former classmate of mine who also went to the University of Michigan. We got to talking about the jock and he told me that his attitude changed really fast once he was there and he became humble. Where in high school, he was the star and most everything seemed to come easy to him, at the U of M, he was just average and had to bust his butt just to be average.

I want to cry and scream.

and they are everywhere...and well, they uh, make you feel good.

But...lots of kids in High School are disappointed every day...and that sucks too.

I truly wish her parents had helped her find a more attainable goal.

My experience with cheerleading is that it is not considered a sport by many, when indeed it is. There is jumping and lifting and throwing and holding up others. It is dangerous. I think of a cheerleader that I knew growing up that ended up dying our Senior year when she fell and broke her neck.

I can see the difficulties of having someone on the squad that wasn't able to do these things. Not being unkind, but it would most assuredly affect the performance of the entire squad and that isn't fair to those that have worked hard and practiced to become part of an elite squad. Many girls are able to go to college on Cheerleading scholarships.

These squads have a limited number of spots on them. Would it be fair to deny a kid that worked hard to make the squad a place because it was given to someone solely because they were handicapped?

Unfortunately, life is very unfair.

The girl is in band and Pep squad. It doesn't sound like she is socially deprived. She has loving parents who would do everything (like we all would) at their disposal to help their child attain their dream...even resorting to a "feel bad" story. I'd do it for my child if it would help, so I do "get it". But...at the end of the day, while I am very sorry that this child didn't get to have her dream, and at the end of the day, am extremely sympathetic to her physical plight...I do understand the forces that stood in the way for her to reach her dream.