STMS WILDCAT CHEER

Crowds have been cheering since the advent of sports, but it wasn’t until the late 1800’s that organized cheering came to be. In 1883, Great Britain started the trend of cheering and chanting in unison at sports games, but the first official cheer wasn’t performed until 1884 at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

One member of that Princeton audience, Mark Peebles, brought cheerleading with him to the University of Minnesota and created a specific set of cheers for each different game. Peebles took it upon himself to lead the UOM crowd during football games, but another University of Minnesota student, named Johnny Campbell, took organized cheering even further by coordinating an entire team to the lead the crowd. From that day—November 2, 1898—foward, Campbell was known as the world’s first official cheerleader.