Fem Society
Doylestown, Pennsylvania (population 8,300) is just an hour north of downtown Philadelphia, enough to share Philadelphia’s accents and occasional FM radio signals. But other than that, it’s a different universe. Country road signs sell deer-resistant plants. Signs promoting the “Goat’s Hoe” farm may or may not be ironic. The training facility of Victory Vipers All-Stars, a local competitive cheering squad, quietly located on the outskirts of the town, just east of the airport, is located in a vinyl industrial warehouse next to an auto parts store.
On typical weekday nights, a stable stream of minivans and SUVs rushes in and out of the parking lot, lined up for depositing and collecting athletes with ponytail water bottles in T-shirts and cheering shorts. Team sports are life here in Backcounty, where one player’s town may be about 30 minutes drive from another player’s town. Your team will be in your world.
Princess Maddy was a 16-year-old Victory Viper who recently joined the team before the pandemic temporarily closed the gym last year. She fits perfectly with other cheerleaders and records their lip-sync and dance routines on Instagram and TikTok (Muddy has about 100,000 followers). Viper spent a lot of time together, even during off-season competitions. Cheerleading is done all year round, usually three days a week. Athletes need to maintain peak conditioning and work as a group for successful accurate aerial stunts. Mistakes and misunderstandings can cost points in high stakes competition. It can also mean ankle sprains, wrist fractures, or worse.
Maddy was both a “flyer” and a “base.” In other words, she alternated between soaring in the air and helping those others. Her teammate Allie Spone was a full-time flyer. This was more highly appreciated in the cheering scene. Competition within the team can be fierce, but the girls are doing well, says Ally. She was even oversleeping when a video that would soon become a national headline was filmed.
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Kelli María Korducki is a writer, reporter and editor whose work has been published in The New York Times, NYT Magazine, Guardians, and throughout the Internet.
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