Club Sports

Bilal Vaughn defied ‘gender norms’ to become a Syracuse cheerleader

Courtesy of Bilal Vaughn

A chance encounter at the gym last year made Bilal Vaughn a cheerleader. And that was just the start.

In the gym, fifth-year Syracuse student Bilal Vaughn resembles a Division I linebacker or an Olympic weightlifter. He’s nearly 6 feet tall and about 220 pounds. But Vaughn is much more.

Last year, Vaughn joined the Syracuse cheerleading squad, which he had not considered until his senior year. Now, he has shifted his priorities from rallying rowdy crowds to mentoring students in the Syracuse community through Project GRIND, an organization he co-founded in 2015 that is dedicated to educating young students about topics such as peer pressure and developing good study habits.

“I wouldn’t do anything differently,” Vaughn said. “I pretty much just went in with the mindset of, ‘I can do it, I can do it all and I can be the best at it.’”

Vaughn’s cheerleading journey began last fall, when a male cheerleader approached him while Vaughn was lifting weights in Archbold Gymnasium.

“(He) was like ‘Yo, you’re a big shot. You’re a strong guy. We would like to have you on the cheerleading team,’” Vaughn said. “I was like, ‘Wait, what? Me?’ I used to play football and lacrosse, and I’m always seeing these cheerleaders as girls, and I thought, ‘That’s not a sport, they’re just chanting.’”



Su football takes on Colgate week 1 of the 2016 Season

Courtesy of Bilal Vaughn

Vaughn was one of several men to join the cheerleading team without any prior experience. Summer Thompson, Vaughn’s former teammate, said Vaughn thrived because of “his energy and willingness to learn new skills and stunts whenever they were thrown at him.”

Vaughn, an Atlanta native, learned how integral precise movements, strength and agility are to cheering. One wrong move and a teammate could end up hitting the mat hard.

Physically, Vaughn felt ready. It was the other factors, like social stigmas and gender roles, that posed as larger obstacles.

“One of the biggest things is it’s hard for African Americans to accept if a certain gender is going outside the gender norm,” he said. “And once I joined the cheerleading team, I got a lot of sideways looks. People would ask me, ‘Really, cheerleading?’”

Thompson also points to “the stigma attached to cheering” as the reason why more men do not participate. She referenced the first organized cheer squad, an all-men team at Princeton University in 1877. At Syracuse in 2017, the team consists of up to 55 athletes, about eight of whom are men.

“When most people think about cheerleading,” Thompson said, “they think of it as a girly sport when in fact the first cheerleaders were actually men. I think it takes a real man to go out here and really cheer and show how manly it can be.”

Vaughn’s cheerleading career ended after one season, and he said he didn’t return to the team this year because of personal reasons. Instead, he devoted himself to Project GRIND, the mentorship program, and he also bestowed the moniker on his Vaughn’s personal training business, GRIND Athletics.

Jazzi-Blue Baker, Project GRIND’s current president, said the organization is designed to teach life skills to underserved students in the Syracuse community. Vaughn, she said, “developed the entire concept.”

The group plans to bring the GRIND students up to main campus this year, Vaughn said, so they can experience football and basketball games. One of Vaughn’s goals is to bring the lessons he learned from his experience with the cheerleading team to the students he’s mentoring.

“Being an African American man doesn’t have to put me into one hole,” Vaughn said. “It doesn’t mean I have to be a ballplayer, a rapper. I can do anything I want to do.

“And that’s something I want to share.”





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