Featured column by Jeff in the Dayton Daily News:

CHEERLEADERS ARE AS SPECIAL AS OTHER ATHLETES

Years ago, when I was my daughter’s age, I was a cocky jock who thought he owned the school because I could make a jump shot from the top of the key. With such incredible talent, I was sure someone, someday, would throw a parade in my honor.

Girls had no place in the complicated and aggressive world of athletics. Forget what Billy Jean King had to say. Girls were smart and clean, and pretty to look at when our weary, bedazzled opponent called a timeout.

You’re going to start throwing things at me here. But cheerleaders were like the hood ornament on a spiffy, speedy car.

No way, I said to myself, would I ever have a daughter who was a cheerleader. It just wasn’t going to happen.

You already know where this is going, don’t you? The years passed, I met a beautiful woman, and a few years later I became the father of a precious little baby, a girl. From the beginning, Chloe was a mixture of the two of us.

Like her mom, she loves dressing up and throwing a party for almost any occasion. She loves pink and knows instantly whether a pair of earrings goes well with a particular dress. Evidently, girls are born with this innate sense of … fluff. I’ll never understand it.

But Chloe does have her redeeming qualities (wink). Like I used to be, she’s not afraid to challenge the competition and get a little sweat on her brow.

I got her started in soccer. I’ve taken her to play golf, and go skiing. She’d go whitewater rafting in a heartbeat, and she’ll gladly play football when my high school buddies reunite in the Turkey Bowl each Thanksgiving morning.

She’s an athlete. Atta’ girl.

She displays that athletic talent best in the one thing I never dreamed would be an athletic endeavor. She’s a cheerleader at Springboro Junior High, a Panther to the core, as proud as any member of the football or basketball teams.

Have you seen cheerleaders nowadays?

A competition squad cheerleader is one part gymnast, one part dancer and another part Kamikaze pilot. They’re doing things I would never dream of doing when I was that age.

Flip. Tuck. Backhandspring. Do all three a hundred times in an eight-minute set, and in sync with 25 other teammates. It’s really quite impressive.

This weekend, their competition season will end with a big event at St. John Arena, a place where guys like Havlicek, Knight and Lucas led the Buckeyes to basketball victory so many years ago.

A season that started last July with cheer camp and sweat-soaked practices, and has ventured through the fall and winter with a thousand aching backs and twisted ankles, will come to an end, hopefully with the biggest trophy of the year.

They will do this and yet not get a banner headline in the newspaper. Short of a mention during the morning announcements at school, they’ve competed all year for virtually no glory or recognition at all. And I don’t hear anyone really complaining about that.

A lot of life’s toil goes unheralded. The girls are learning that lesson early.

But they will forever carry with them a quiet confidence that comes from having real talent. Like a math whiz who races straight through to calculus and a science phenom who memorizes the periodic table, they are special.

As special as their football and basketball counterparts.

So special that maybe there should one day be a parade for them, complete with ticker-tape and bands and fancy cars.

I’d be happy to help out, too. Surely those fancy cars have hood ornaments that need a good shine. And afterward I could serve out a big dose of humble pie.

God surely has a sense of humor.