CNN: “People who’ve watched the video are saying how much they’re liking it, saying how much it means to them and saying that they really like the lessons that these women are giving.”
Subscriber Anne just sent this to me (thanks!). I missed the second airing of SciCheer on CNN so this was fun to read (for me, at least).
Darlene Cavalier on CNN
HOLMES: All right. Twenty-two minutes past the hour. This is turning to the guy hour this morning. We just got to talking about sports and football. Now, we’re turning to cheerleaders.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Cheerleaders, yes. But, you know, women love the story.
HOLMES: This is a good one.
LEVS: This is a group of cheerleaders unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The women that you’re about to meet here are neurophysicists and astrophysicists and doctors. Listen to this. (VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: This is called science cheerleader. Let’s keep watching it here. And it’s taking off. And what happened is these are former NFL and NBA pro cheerleaders who are now getting back together and they were recently cheering at this event basically where the Science Foundation got together and had this big event.
Let’s listen to what some of them say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DARLENE CAVALIER, FOUNDER, FORMER ’76ERS CHEERLEADERS: — cheerleaders are smart. They’re funny. They’re entertaining. They’re engaging. But most importantly, they’re an incredible source of inspiration to millions of young women. Go science! You get the point.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: That was the woman who is the head of it.
I’ll tell you what? We’ll skip ahead a little bit and let’s go back to that first video. I want you guys to see a little bit more.
What we’re talking about here is — they performed at something called the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington last month, and this video that they put together went online and now, it’s getting thousands and thousands and thousands of clicks. People leaving all the great comments about it and they’re saying all these great things about how basically they believe it’s busting down stereotypes.
And, in fact, one of the things that you see in this video is them saying we’re busting down the stereotypes. And these women talk about how much they love being cheerleaders and how much they’ve always been interested in science. Some of them are doctors now, nurses, taking on all sorts of different roles in different fields of science.
And the woman you saw who is the organizer of it, Darlene Cavalier, is a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia ’76ers and now a science advocate. And so, they got together. They did this performance at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington and I’ll tell you, people are loving this.
And it’s nice to see, these people come out and send a message to you on girls, to women in general, that science is cool and it’s something to get into. Hey, anything it takes to get young people more and more interested in science in our country is a good thing.
I have all of it posted for you online at Facebook and Twitter. And if you take a look there, you’ll see what some of the people are already talking about. Those are my pages JoshLevsCNN.
People who’ve watched the video are saying how much they’re liking it, saying how much it means to them and saying that they really like the lessons that these women are giving.
So, T.J., it is indeed inspirational and surprising way. These are former NFL and NBA cheerleaders off in the science world an maybe saving some lives.
HOLMES: You know, and now, guys at the game with their wives have an excuse, I am admiring her because of her brain, when they’re looking at the cheerleaders on the sidelines. There you go.
All right. We appreciate you as always, Josh. Thanks so much.