CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and we are live at the National High School Varsity Cheerleading Championships, simulcast on NBS Sports 2, pom~pom.com, and Hajji al-Janābah TV in the Kingdom of Hejaz.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, wondering what sort of sins you and I must have committed in our previous lives to draw such an assignment.

CARL: It’s the off-season; we do what we must to pay the mortgage and the alimony, and our chatter lends an air of authenticity to what many regard as a quasi-sport. And are you saying that you’re uncomfortable watching 1800 18-year-olds doing acrobatics in attire best described as “risqué business?”

TOM: That’s right, Carl. Not for any physical defect these finely sculpted, starved, and surgery’d beauties might exhibit, but rather because watching their cavalcade of toned gams makes me feel like a dirty old man peering into the ladies’ locker room through a knothole.

CARL: In that case, Tom, you’re in luck: our next squad up after the Hopewell High Cheering Grizzlies is the Lancaster County Consolidated Rural School District’s Solemn Adherents. As you can see, the entire school district is made up of Old Order Amish, but that hasn’t stopped their team, the Passive Solemn Adherents, from making it all the way to state five times in the past 20 years.

TOM: That’s right Carl, it would be hard to mistake those starched bonnets and homespun dresses for the miniskirts and flying buttress blouses favored by the other competitors. I see some concessions to modernity though: the dresses are dark purple rather than flat black, have the LCCRSD logo and Peaceful Cornhusker mascot cross-stitched on, and the dresses are a full, and scandalous, one inch shorter than usual.

CARL: We might see some flashes of ankle, Tom.

TOM: That’s right Carl, we might.

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