Cheerleading Squad Pursues Elusive Title

For nine consecutive years, the Canoga Park High School squad has participated in the Universal Cheerleading Assn.’s National High School Cheerleading Championship.

But so far they have never won the top spot.

“It’s the only competition that has eluded us,” said Coach Carolyn Purkey.

But the team has another chance to take it all in February, when it travels to Orlando, Fla., as one of the eight schools--and the only one from the San Fernando Valley--to represent California at the competition.

Twenty-two members of the coed squad are fund-raising to earn the $18,000 needed to travel to Florida. The competition will be televised on ESPN in the spring.

The students have raised enough for air fare, Purkey said, but they still need money for accommodations, food and travel to and from the competition site.

The fund-raising “always starts out this way, slowly,” said squad co-captain Brianne Strauss. “But we always end up getting more later.”

The 17-year-old attributes their success to sacrifice and the time spent for the team.

“We work hard,” she said. “A lot of us don’t have social lives. Our best friends are our squads. And when we are not competing, we’re practicing.”

But she said it is worth it to experience the thrill of victory.

Purkey said their nine-year streak is partly the result of a missing element in her own high school cheerleading experience. A 1975 graduate of Canoga High, Purkey said that when she was a song leader, the squad did not have a coach, only a faculty advisor.

“I felt cheated as an athlete that all the other athletes had coaches,” she said. “All we had was an advisor who would stick his head in the gym and say, ‘Are you guys OK?’ and walk out. We didn’t have the opportunity to compete like the other schools because we didn’t have a full-time coach. It was a goal for me to come back and change that.”