ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 15, 1996 TAG: 9611150057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ANDREWS, TEXAS
SOURCE: SUE ANNE PRESSLEY THE WASHINGTON POST
In this football-crazy West Texas town, many girls long to be high school cheerleaders, reigning happily over the starlit Friday night games, and Callie Smartt has always been one of them.
It makes no difference to her that she was born with cerebral palsy and moves about in a wheelchair. She had plenty of school spirit to go around.
Last year, at Andrews High School, her dream came true: She was a freshman cheerleader.
The fans seemed to delight in her. The football players said they loved to see her dazzling smile. And then last spring, at the end of the school sports season, Smartt was kicked off the squad. Safety reasons, she was told.
Shocked and hurt, the 15-year-old began crying and couldn't stop. Her mother had to pick her up at school, and it took hours to calm her down.
``I hate people treating me like I'm a baby,'' Smartt said. ``No one makes fun of me at school or on the field. They always yell, `Go, Callie!'''
Smartt was relegated this fall to honorary cheerleader on the junior varsity team, and her activities have been curtailed. She is no longer allowed to cheer at away games, participate in cheerleading fund-raisers, or wheel her chair up and down the sidelines at games.
She also has been told that the honorary cheerleading position is being abolished, and that if she wants to continue, she will have to try out next spring just like anyone else - a rigorous routine involving splits and tumbles that she could never master.
School officials imposed the new strictures at the urging of some of the other cheerleaders and their parents. All this is enough to make Fonda Smartt, Callie's mother, question the critics' motives and the exalted status of cheerleading in this remote oil-field town of 10,000.
After consulting with a state agency, she has vowed to fight for ``what is right'' for her daughter.
Callie is a familiar and active figure in town, earning the nickname ``Hot Rod'' for the speed and skill with which she maneuvers her wheelchair. Never one to get discouraged, the ``A'' and ``B'' student belongs to the school choir and art club and, in 10 busy years in 4-H, has won dozens of awards for activities such as baking and pig-raising. She has often amazed her mother with her daring - she proudly lists bungee-jumping as one of her accomplishments.
Peter Francis, a businessman whose daughter, Jennifer, is the head cheerleader on the JV team, has led the opposition to Callie's participation on the squad. He said last week that his stance has ``nothing to do with the young girl. She's smart. She's intelligent. There's always a smile on her face. She's a fine young lady. It's not her at all, period. There's the safety factor.''
He said, ``if a player comes flying off [the field] or a ball is overthrown, a cheerleader can be hit as well as a handicapped girl sitting in a wheelchair. The cheerleader girls who aren't handicapped could move out of the way a little faster. I raised the issue, what about the safety of this person?''
But Fonda Smartt wonders why the safety issue suddenly surfaced because Callie was never hurt or threatened during her freshman year of cheerleading. Smartt noted that an injured football player was recently carried away by ambulance and that other cheerleaders have suffered sprained ankles and wrists simply from performing their routines.
Fonda Smartt consulted with Stephon Breedlove, an attorney with Advocacy Inc. in Lubbock, a federally funded state agency that fights for the rights of the disabled. Breedlove is concerned that the school system may be discouraging an enthusiastic and able student.
``At first it seems they were making an extra effort to include Callie, and now it seems they're making an extra effort to exclude her,'' said Breedlove, who is blind and competed as a wrestler in high school and college.
``I think safety reasons may be based more on stereotypes and general fears, instead of someone actually doing a well-thought-out analysis of what would be safe for her as compared to the other girls. People with disabilities are not barred by any law from taking risks.''
Perhaps, Breedlove suggested, the cheerleading program is taken a little too seriously at Andrews High. ``Maybe only the few, the proud, can do it,'' he said dryly.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Callie Smartt, who has cerebral palsy, cheered onby CNBthe freshman squad last year in Andrews, Texas. color.