Front & Center Not content to be hidden in the background, Rockland High School quarterback doubles as a cheerleader

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When the Rockland High School cheerleading team takes the floor for today’s Class B state championship competition in Bangor, the Tigers will open with a complicated sequence designed to wow the judges.

In the midst of it all, as a featured performer in the opening set, will be Andrew Weiss, who spends his time in the fall season as starting quarterback for the school’s football team.

The Rockland junior punctuates his routine-opening back flip with a wide smile that’s as much a product of his interest in stage performance and his outgoing personality as it is the knowledge that if he doesn’t smile – even if he lands on his backside during the flip – the cheerleading judges will mark down his team.

“If I’m going to be in something, I’m going to do everything I can to be the best I can at it,” he said before a recent competition. “To be hidden in the back, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

Weiss prefers to be front and center in most things, whether it’s helping to start a weightlifting club at school, landing a role in the school play, or playing the highest-profile position on the school’s football team.

Weiss also chooses to be different from the rest of his peers. That’s why he’s as comfortable running a no-huddle offense on the football field as he is performing a back flip during a cheerleading routine.

“I don’t like to be your stereotypical kind of person,” he said. “I’ll do anything, just be involved. What the heck, it’s a new experience. Now I’ve got a whole new respect for cheerleading and how demanding it is. And it’s a lot of fun.”

Those who were a bit surprised that a football quarterback wanted to be a cheerleader were still supportive.

“I thought it was pretty cool that he was doing that,” said Mark Boynton, a junior tailback who lifts weights with Weiss in the morning. “Everybody else is doing basketball, so I think it’s great that he can do football and cheer. Not everybody has the guts to go out there and do it.”

It’s likely that the 180-pound, 6-foot Weiss is the only starting quarterback on a cheerleading roster in the state.

Although more and more college-age men are drawn to a sport historically associated with females, boys on Maine high school cheerleading teams are still rare. Approximately 2.4 percent of the cheerleaders who competed at the Eastern Maine and Western Maine regionals on Jan. 28 were male.

Cheerleading coach Becky Howard was surprised when Weiss came out for the team. And he wasn’t the only boy who did.

“Honestly, I was absolutely stunned,” said Howard. “I told the girls we needed to do some recruiting because interest had been going down. They came back with four boys.”

She had her doubts at first about how serious they were.

“I thought it was all talk. Typical guy stuff, trying to impress a girl,” said Howard.

That the quarterback of a football team would want to be a cheerleader might seem even more unusual.

The role of the football quarterback has taken on connotations of heroic maleness and machismo in our culture. Cheerleading still is seen by some as an activity for girls designed to support high-profile sports such as football and basketball.

Weiss, however, is all for doing his own thing and bucking stereotypes. He’s at school by 6 a.m. three mornings a week to lift weights; after school he has rehearsals for Rockland High’s one-act play “The Idiot and the Oddity,” in which he has a part.

He’s a newly minted National Honor Society member who is also the treasurer of the Key Club. In the fall Weiss works with the town peewee football program. In the spring he plans to join the outdoor track and field team.

Weiss knows the quarterback-slash-male cheerleader thing – a clash of cultural expectations – is unusual.

“It’s not [seen as] cool,” he said. “Kids these days, if you’re a teenager, a lot of your life has to do with your peers and what they think about you and how you feel, if you feel like you’re in good standing with your friends. … I think a lot of people think, he’s a cheerleader and cheerleading is [silly]. A lot of people worry about what other people think.”

Weiss wants to be different. He likes being involved. He wants to see the stereotypes shattered.

He also wants to win, which is one of the biggest reasons he chose cheerleading for his winter sport this year.

Among the goals Weiss has set for his high school career is to graduate with a state championship on his record. He’d prefer a state title in football, which he has been playing since he was an 8-year-old in his native Pennsylvania, but Weiss isn’t picky. He knows his best chance may come as a cheerleader.

As he likes to point out to pals who tease him for his choice to cheer – and they do tease, he said with a laugh – Rockland football hasn’t won a title lately. Although Weiss had a fine football season last fall with 1,200 passing yards, 800 rushing yards, 10 touchdown passes, at least eight rushing TDs, and first-team all-conference honors, the Tigers had a 5-4 record and missed making the playoffs.

The cheerleaders, however, won the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B championship and placed third in the Eastern Maine Class B regional in January. They have a shot at a state title today.

“I like that, a winning environment,” said Weiss, whose other football goal is to be considered for the Fitzpatrick Trophy, the state’s top honor in that sport. “[Cheerleading is] the most successful sport at Rockland now. Who else has won the most here? They’re winners. Maybe that will carry over to football.”

Most of those who know Weiss, including Daryle Weiss, who coaches the football team and happens to be Andrew’s uncle, weren’t surprised he wanted to be a cheerleader.

“Besides myself and my brother, he’s probably the most independent person I know,” Daryle Weiss said. “He’s going to do whatever’s right for him. I wish every kid had the opportunity to excel in different areas.”

With his strength and tumbling ability, Weiss has developed into a fine cheerleader, although initially it took some convincing from the rest of the cheerleaders for him to try out for Howard’s squad.

Rockland has a history of including boys on the team. Weiss knew Sean Curtain, a former Tiger cheerleader who is now cheering at the University of Maine, and that made it seem OK to be a male cheerleader. The fact that fellow football players Coby Boutot and Christian Willey were also cheerleaders made Weiss even more comfortable.

“For the longest time the girls were like, dude, you should cheer, you should cheer,” Weiss said. “One day I literally just said, OK, what the heck, I’ll do it. I figured if nothing else I’ll learn how to do a back flip, and that’s pretty cool.”

Weiss has learned how to do more than a back flip. He learned how to base stunts, how to tumble – well enough to be featured on the opening back flip – and how to smile while retaining his manliness.

It took some time for Weiss and his football teammates to feel comfortable smiling. They’re used to stony, intense football faces. Football players, Weiss said, don’t even smile for their team pictures.

“[In cheerleading] you’re just hurting your team if you’re trying to be cool out there, if you’re out there like, heyyyy,” he said, making like a latter-day Fonzie from the TV show “Happy Days.” “You can’t be shy or cool about it. Part of being a cheerleader is being out there. You’ve got to smile every chance you get.”

At first, Weiss considered the prospect of hanging out with a big group of athletic, fun, pretty girls a bonus to joining the cheerleading team. He got over that when he saw how competitive the girls were.

“That’s definitely a benefit, to hang out with the girls. But once you move on and think that’s kind of immature, you think, ‘I’m going to states. I could win a state championship.”‘

Football and cheerleading have a lot in common, Weiss discovered. Both are team sports that require total synchronicity. And the movements Weiss does in cheerleading will likely help him on the gridiron. Those back flips help with flexibility, while holding the lighter cheerleaders above his head during stunts is the equivalent to weightlifting moves.

“It’s working muscles I’ve never worked before,” Weiss said. “The first couple of days I was like, I didn’t know I had those muscles. There’s soreness in football and I’m used to that. But this is different.”

Howard has noted Weiss’ quick development.

“He could pass for a gymnast now,” she said. “He’s turned into a mature tumbler. He really gives it his all, and he’s taking it as seriously as he takes his football.”

Despite having his star quarterback doing an activity that has been associated with high injury rates, Daryle Weiss wasn’t worried about his nephew.

“I kind of joked with him last fall, don’t break your right arm,” the coach said. “He’s been kicked in the face a few times, had a couple of bloody noses, but it’s really no different than [a quarterback] getting sacked by a defensive end.”

Thanks to his experiences on the stage and marching onto the football field every Friday night in the fall, Weiss said he probably won’t be too nervous when the Tigers perform at states.

Throwing a game-winning touchdown pass? Performing the routine-opening back flip? Bring on the pressure.

“I like that. I like the idea of competing,” Weiss said. “That’s the whole reason I do sports, to go out there and win. That’s what I want to do.”