Marc B. Shapiro writes: When I was in high school in the early 1980s, in the New Jersey-New York yeshiva league only the girls of Bruriah wore sweat pants during basketball games (and the boys were not allowed to attend home games). At the other high schools the girls wore shorts. Today, the league requires all girls to wear sweat pants (i.e., not even long shorts). For a wonderful discussion of the yeshiva basketball league, see Jeffrey S. Gurock, Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports (Bloomington, 2005), ch. 7. Gurock discusses how for six years in the early 1950s, Yeshiva Chaim Berlin was part of the basketball league together with the Modern Orthodox co-ed high schools, something that could never happen today. During this time co-ed schools had cheerleaders, and this was a major factor in forcing Chaim Berlin to leave the league. (Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem was also in the league for two years.) When I mention cheerleaders, don’t think of current NFL cheerleader outfits. Here, for example, is how the Brooklyn Central girls looked (from Gurock, p. 143).
Yet Gurock, ibid., points out that “as the 1950s progressed, the Brooklyn Central cheerleaders’ skirts also got shorter and shorter.” (Speaking of short skirts, anyone who has looked at Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school yearbooks from the early 1970s will see that the mini-skirt craze was also tolerated at these institutions.)
Jon Baker (Ramaz ’83): “R Shapiro: sounds like we were in HS about the same time. Miniskirts made a comeback in 1980; by the next year the Ramaz dress code included “skirts must be to the knee.” But the cheerleaders kept their uniforms: miniskirts with heavy opaque tights underneath.”
A friend says to Luke: “When I was going to an Seventh-Day Adventist middle school, some girls tried to do cheerleading but it was hard to do without dancing. And they all backed out. Good times. It was going to be a cheerless squad of long skirts and just yelling out encouragement words while standing up straight without moving. It just did not work out.”
