The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

There is some kind of irony in coming home full of the pride and

perspective and inspiration New York City provides these days to find

that the biggest story to hit the Pilot while I was gone was the agony of

Newport Harbor High School cheerleaders who didn’t make the squad and

whose parents were threatening the system that stiffed them.

Is it possible that when our leaders were urging us to return to

normalcy after the events of Sept. 11 this is what they had in mind?

When I settle in after a trip, I pile all the accumulated newspapers

carefully by date and read my way through them; thus I followed the Great

Cheerleader Caper with the same avid attention as the search for Bin

Laden. The mindless quotes from children (“I think something like this

could provoke a school shooting like the one in Santee”). The quite

remarkable waffling of the principal, who changed his position as often

as a political candidate sniffing the wind of polls. The outrage of

cheerleader parents who apparently regard any sort of rejection of their

children as a lifelong trauma.

I know this is an easy target. I know there were rational comments

mixed with the vacuous. I know that comparing the hurt of teenage girls

with a national tragedy is consummately unfair. But it also seems to me

there are some roots to this nonsense that need to be identified and

pulled out.

The Cheerleader Caper hit pretty close to home for me on several

counts. First of all, I went through this same wringer with my youngest

daughter more years ago than either of us cares to contemplate. She tried

out for cheerleader at Corona del Mar High School, then waited to see if

she would be anointed.

At that time, a carload of those already chosen would pull up at the

front door of the winners, who would then pile joyously into the car to

help notify the next winner.

My daughter paced our front hall for several hours waiting for the car

to arrive. This gave me a lot of time to contemplate how much it was

going to cost for uniforms if she won and to wonder how parents without

the means dealt with this problem. It also gave me time to ponder what I

would say to her if the car didn’t arrive.

Well, it did. But I am quite certain that if it hadn’t, she would have

gone to her room, cried, and then gone about her school business the next

morning. If there had been prolonged agony and sour grapes, I would have

been surprised, disappointed and concerned that we had failed to put the

successes and failures normal to any active life in some sort of workable

perspective for her. And also that what she might see as injustice is not

a conspiracy to do her in but choices seen as legitimate by others that

will balance out over the long pull.

Where do kids get the idea that when they enter competition in any

activity at any level there are only two possible results for them:

winning or somehow being cheated? Or that losing means living with a

permanently injured psyche? The adults who pander to this kind of

nonsense perpetuate it by watering down the joy of competition and the

satisfaction of winning into the mush of giving a trophy to everyone.

That doesn’t mean everybody wins. It means nobody wins.

That apparently was the thinking of the Newport Harbor principal when

at some point in his peregrinations he offered the solution of expanding

the cheerleader team to include all those who tried out.

This redefines winning in a way that might, indeed, traumatize the

contestants because it denigrates individual skill and effort. The only

thing that makes a winner of everyone is knowing that he or she gave

their best effort -- and certainly not that they were added to what has

become a meaningless team by spineless administrators.

I can remember with absolute clarity the knot in my stomach more than

60 years ago as I approached the bulletin board posted outside the office

of my high school basketball coach and scanned the list of names that

comprised the final cut for the team. Sometimes I was on it, and

sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes there may have been personal favoritism

involved, but I didn’t tell that to my parents, use it as an excuse or

consult a lawyer.

Then there was standing in front of a schedule board after a check

flight early in World War II waiting to see whether the arrow beside my

name would point up or down -- with my future in the Navy riding on this

decision. In all these competitions of life, we win some and we lose

some. But, mostly, we give it our best shot -- and then move on. The

moving on part seems to have been lost in the Cheerleader Caper.

On the same day the Los Angeles Times carried its cheerleader story,

the sports section -- where ultimate wisdom is most likely to appear --

included a quote from Drew Bledsoe, longtime quarterback of the NFL’s New

England Patriots. Aftera terrible beginning this year, Bledsoe was hurt

and replaced by his backup, who turned the team around and led it to the

playoffs. When Bledsoe recovered, he was forced to watch someone else

leading his team.

Asked about his feelings, he said: “It’s real simple. It’s the way I

was taught, the way I was brought up. Handle yourself with dignity and

self-respect regardless of what the situation is. That’s always the

choice you have. You look at it and do the right thing.”

This means living up to contracts signed and moving on. It doesn’t

mean referring the matter to committees or the vote of participants or

spreading the largess until it is meaningless.

If one incipient cheerleader learns that lesson from this experience,

I suppose it will have been worthwhile. But it shouldn’t have been

necessary.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.