Rick Knobloch

It was late in my Sophomore year that I broke out of my shell a little with Mario’s help. When I got to Westmoor, I was surprised to see no guys on the squad. El Camino had male cheerleaders and pompom girls. At a basketball game, Mario was sitting behind me in the stands and we both found each other complaining that the cheerleaders didn’t coordinate their cheers with the flow of the game. It seemed like they did the wrong cheer for what was happening on the floor, almost as if they weren’t watching the game.

Mario & I started screaming out cheers that matched what was going on and the crowd followed our lead. It was crazy, but exciting too. You could tell the crowd wanted to scream for the team and get them going but that the cheerleaders had no clue (or so it seemed to us).

We introduced each other and I told Mario how at El Camino they had guys leading the cheers and we needed something like that here. He agreed. I said we’ll I’ll try out for the squad if you’ll go with me and do it too. We would have a blast. Mario agreed with me and I think it was later that year, we showed up at the tryouts along with one other guy. The rally committee advisor didn’t know what to do with us so she decided that rather than have us take one of the girls spot on the squad, we could try out and if we made it, we made it on our own merit and would be in addition to the five girls.

We went to the same training the girls went to and were there for the final tryout. Everyone had to do the same cheer, so you can imagine how the crowd began getting lethargic after a while. So when it was my turn, I yelled at the crowd that I needed them to take it up a notch and yell like they never had before. I was blown away by how loud they were. It was exhilarating! Mario did the same thing and the rest, as they say, is history. After Mario graduated, I couldn’t imagine being a cheerleader by myself and didn’t know who else might also try out, so I decided to try for something else to be of service to my classmates.

Some of my best friends had been an office holder of one kind or another. Charlie Freiberg was Sophomore Class President, then Student Body Vice President, and finally Student Body President. Bob Joyce was our Junior Class President, so I felt like it was up to me to carry the banner and keep our class winning all the awards everyone expected us to win (particularly, spirit week, the can food & clothing drives and to make sure we earned enough money for grad night). I figured I had the best chance to accomplish that task having just come off a year where most people knew who I was since I was in their face at the games and spirit rallies.””I remember in our senior year, when I was class President and Charlie was Student Body President. I was friends with Charlie, Bob Joyce, Rick Karp, Steve Williams and another of our great friends, Aldo Tesi. I recall some of us being in one of our classes, just before lunch. We had a substitute teacher that day. I asked the girl that was sitting up in the front corner of the class to please get the teacher’s attention. She raised her hand and asked the teacher about a particular problem. While the teacher was bent over her desk looking at the problem, I made my way down the opposite side of the classroom and slipped out the door. Almost immediately, I walked in the door as if I was on a mission. Everybody in the class was getting a good chuckle out it. I showed my “permanent” hall pass (given to officers in each class so we could conduct school business for our class or school during regular class time), and asked that the teacher please excuse Aldo for an important meeting. We went about excusing all our friends and headed to the deli just up the street from Westmoor. Aldo worked at the deli part time He said hello to everybody he worked with then promptly went behind the counter, took our orders and proceeded to make us world class sub sandwiches on french rolls with fresh pickles and the like. We each got an ice cold soda and with our brown bags headed back to school for the lunch break. As you may recall, in those days, it was unheard of to have a cold can of anything since they didn’t have soda pop machines on campus. We were pretty proud of ourselves and our having pulled it off.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *