On November 6, 1869, the first intercollegiate football game was played. The contestants were Princeton and Rutgers. From that game came the basic idea of a cheering section.
Before the Princeton team journeyed to Rutgers, the players decided on some new strategy. During the game, they would let loose some blood-curdling yells that were intended to frighten the Rutgers players. They called this yell the Scarer.
Unfortunately, the strategy didn’t work completely. The Rutgers players were taken aback by the yells, but the screaming also interfered with the Princeton team. It took too much breath and too much energy to keep yelling all the time. And everyone seemed distracted. Nobody knew when to yell and when to be quiet and play. Princeton lost that game, 6-4.
Still, the yelling seemed like a good idea, particularly if the players didn’t have to do it. When Rutgers met Princeton again, some Princeton students got together and agreed to yell the Scarer so that the team could concentrate on playing football. It worked. Princeton won, 8-0. And since then college teams, as well as pro teams, have their own section of “cheerleaders.”
On August 11, 1965, 12-year old Karen Muir swam against 17-year old Linda Ludgrove, who held the world’s record in the backstroke. Karen, who was not yet a teen-ager, defeated the older girl and broke her world record, swimming the distance of 110 yards in 1 minute 8.7 seconds. Karen Muir became the youngest person to hold a world record in a major sports event.
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Muir
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