The history of cheerleading began in the early 1800's when the crowd would yell and chant to get the team pumped. The first cheer was credited to Princton University in 1884. A couple years later, one of the Princton grads, Tom Peebles, took cheerleading to the University of Minnesota.Minnesota came up with it's first male cheer squad in 1903. It was beleived back then that cheerleading was a male sport because they figured that their deeper voices would project better than a woman's voice would. Women didn't get involved in cheerleading until the early 1920's when people began to see the women's ability to do gymnastics and making pyramids. In the early 1900's the pom pom and the megaphone was introduced by a guy named Lawrence Herkimer. That really gave cheerleading a symbol.Today, younger cheersquads like High School and Middle School squads are mostly made up of females. In college, male cheerleaders make up at least fifty percent of cheer squads.
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