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Liberty boy blazes cheerleading trail
By JEANNE STARMACK
starmack@vindy.com
LIBERTY
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On a beautiful, exceptionally warm fall afternoon last week, the Liberty Leopards were ready for some football.
The middle-school team was taking on the LaBrae Vikings at home, and as usual, each team had a squad of cheerleaders warming up on the sidelines to support it.
What was unusual, though, was the presence of 13-year-old Dakota Hrabowy. He was hanging out with the Liberty cheerleaders, but he wasn’t about to be shooed away because he belonged somewhere else, like out on the field or up in the stands.
Dakota was there because he belonged. He is the first male cheerleader in the school’s history.
Now in eighth grade, he’s starting his second year with the squad. Yes, he got teased. Some of the comments were pretty cruel. They didn’t stop him, because cheering is something he really wanted to do. And guess what? People got over it.
“I don’t know,” said his coach, Dena DeRenzis, as she watched her squad practice right before the game started.
“I think it’s the stigma attached. Dakota has broken that. He has gotten scrutiny from boys, and a bit of a rough time, but never let it get to him. The girls all welcomed him.
“This year, he’s had a much easier time,” she added. “The high-school boys cheer for him: ‘Yeah, Dakotaaaa...!’ and the middle-school boys are now accepting.”
Even though Dakota is the first male cheerleader Liberty schools has ever had, she continued, they are very common in college.
“They’re athletic and very strong,” she said, adding that she wished her squad had more boys. Pyramids, for instance, would be easier.
“It would be nice to have boys to do that,” she said. “It’s hard enough for me to get a group of girls,” she continued, adding that she had a very small tryout this year.
“I think Dakota himself is the best promotion. He brings a lot to our squad,” she said.
As the squad’s only tumbler, he has a prominent place in the halftime show, which the squad went on to complete in great form in spite of the fact that its music cut out.
Dakota is the son of Sandy and Harold Hrabowy. The family lives on Tibbetts-Wick Road.
“Well, I told him what might happen, other kids might tease him,” Sandy said when she arrived to watch the game. “But he didn’t seem to care. You gotta be like — a trailblazer. He wasn’t afraid. He likes the dancing. He wanted to do it, whether anybody teased him or not.”
Sandy said her son also is in gymnastics and takes dance lessons.
The work that goes into the cheerleading routines sounds a lot like — well, work.
“In summer, we practice almost every day for an hour and a half, five days a week,” Dakota said as he sat beside his mom in the stands after the very physically demanding halftime show.
For him, the standing back flip is the hardest move.
Dakota said his older sister Johnah was his inspiration.
“My sister started gymnastics and I wanted to do it, too. And she did cheerleading and I wanted to do it, too, and my coach encouraged me.”
Yes, he said, the teasing bothered him.
“They did tease me a lot. It stopped after awhile.”
But he has this advice for any other boy who wants to go for it: “Just wing it. Don’t let anyone push you back from trying out.”