Bascom Hill Society Flipbook | University of Wisconsin Foundation

Early women cheerleaders 1956

According to the 1957 Badger yearbook, the first women cheerleaders appeared on Dad’s Day, October 20, 1956 (Wisconsin 6, Purdue 6). A letter from former cheerleaders, however, states that officially sanctioned women cheerleaders first appeared on campus in the fall of 1952 (four women had done a routine at Homecoming 1951, but they were not official cheerleaders). Coed cheerleaders were abolished in the spring of 1954 and then reintroduced in 1956.