We've Got Spirit: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Cheerleading Team

Front Cover
Penguin Publishing Group, Apr 23, 2002 - Sports & Recreation - 368 pages
They tear ligaments, blacken eyes, and crash headfirst into hard floors. They spend grueling hours at practice, drawing admiration and envy -- and sometimes, ridicule -- for their efforts. They've won nine national championships, and endured heartbreaking losses. And they do it -- almost always -- with a smile.

They are the Greenup County High School cheerleading team. ESPN viewers may know them from their televised competitions; in northeastern Kentucky, they qualify as full-fledged celebrities. And in this book, illustrated throughout with photographs, award-winning journalist James McElroy takes you into their world -- a whirlwind of handsprings and hollers, in which the traditional athletic virtues of strength, flexibility, and endurance are supplemented by spirit, and where a squad of unlikely teenage heroines is taking center court and raising a cheer for themselves.

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Contents

Cheer to Win
11
Shes a Cheerleader at Greenup
25
Perfection
39
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

James T. McElroy discovered the story of the Greenup team as a reporter for The Charlotte Leader, where he won the 1997 North Carolina Press Association Award. He lives in New York City with his wife, a former cheerleader and cheerleading coach.

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