SHELBY — At age 91, Lou Ellen Sampsel says her memory isn’t what it used to be.
Even with two of her high school yearbooks open in front of her, the details of her days as a cheerleader for Shelby High School were a bit fuzzy. Perhaps rightfully so — after all, she hasn’t walked those halls since 1949.
But when her daughter Linda tried jogging her memory with the Shelby fight song, it all came right back to her:
When the red and gray fall into line
We’re gonna win this game and that’s a sign
We’re gonna fight fight fight for victory
Until our name goes down in football history
We’re gonna shout shout shout for every game
And the result will always be the same
And all the rest will surely hear the name
Shel-by High!
Meanwhile, Linda’s daughter Carrie said quietly, “I love them because I don’t even remember this, and I’m the youngest one.”
All three women will be practicing the fight song for the last-ever game at Shelby’s W.W. Skiles Field on Friday night. The Whippets will host the Madison Rams for the historic stadium’s finale, then move to their new $4 million athletic complex near the high school to play Bellevue in Week Three.
Lou Ellen Sampsel, her daughter Linda Schumacher, and Linda’s daughter Carrie Sifferlin will represent three generations of Shelby cheerleaders coming back to their home field for a final goodbye. They expect to be hit with a wave of nostalgia; Sifferlin noted this will be her first time attending a football game since graduating in 1999.
“I think that’s why Mom wanted to go, for the memories,” Schumacher said.
“And I wanted to go for the girls,” Sampsel added.
Born Lou Ellen Fireoved, Sampsel grew up in a brick house just up the hill from her current home on Louise Drive. She graduated from Shelby High School in 1949, and was named head cheerleader for the fall cheer season her senior year. She was also a member of the Girls Athletic Association (GAA), an organization that existed prior to Title IX’s passage in 1972.
“The cheerleaders sponsored very entertaining programs during the Pep Meeting sessions,” Sampsel’s senior yearbook reads. “They also aided the student body to learn the new Alma Mater song. At all the games they were present to lead cheers and they did this rain or shine.”
New uniforms were purchased for the cheerleaders that year; the senior mathematics classes voted to pay for the new outfits, deemed “very attractive.” Sampsel’s uniform consisted of a long wool skirt and a collared sweatshirt with an “SHS” megaphone on the front.
After graduation, Sampsel briefly attended Bowling Green State University and studied teaching before marrying her high school sweetheart, Darwin L. Sampsel, on April 22, 1950.
“I was going steady with him,” she said with a laugh.
The couple celebrated 68 years of marriage before Darwin’s death in 2018. Together, they held season tickets for the Whippets and attended every football game at Skiles Field, even after their children and grandchildren graduated. Most Friday nights in the fall, they could be found in their designated seats five rows in front of the press box, before Darwin’s mobility kept them from the games after 2010.
Following in Sampsel’s footsteps, Schumacher cheered for Shelby from seventh to 11th grade, before graduating in 1976. Then, exactly 50 years after Sampsel was head cheerleader for the Whippets, her granddaughter Sifferlin would also be named co-head cheerleader during her own senior year.
Sifferlin was cheering for the football team that won the Northern Ohio League championship outright in 1998. It was the Whippets’ first unbeaten regular season since 1968 and the first NOL title since 1984. In week 10, the team shut out the Tiffin Columbian Tornadoes 28-0 in front of 5,238 fans at Skiles Field.
Sampsel remembers her cheerleading days as “a fun time,” especially the bus rides to away games. Schumacher and Sifferlin recall fond memories of cheer camp. Together, the women represent the evolution of cheerleading as a sport in 50-years time, as the skirts got shorter and the athleticism got more intense.
Quick to defend against people who dismiss cheerleading as a non-sport for “ditzy” girls, Sifferlin recalled being quizzed on the rules for football and basketball during tryouts.
“If we were going to do a certain cheer, we had to know if they really did get a first down,” Sifferlin said. “You had to know what an interception was, what a fumble was. We literally took a handwritten test.”
“I think it’s evolved into more of a sport than it used to be,” Schumacher added. “I’m not even sure they did toe-touches (in 1949). Now the girls are doing 10 backflips and spring across the floor.”
Still, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Shelby’s fight song has been a constant throughout each of the women’s cheerleading careers. Sampsel and Schumacher were dancing the same dance for the fight song, until the dance was changed during Sifferlin’s cheerleading tenure. Sifferlin grew up playing with her mother’s old cheerleading megaphone. All three attended school in the same buildings, albeit for different grades.
Now, with the construction of new buildings and a new football stadium, change is inevitable. Sampsel gazed at her classmates’ faces in her yearbook and wondered if she might be the last of them living.
Family has kept each of this group in Shelby. Sifferlin just open-enrolled her daughter in Shelby City School District, and each live within minutes of Sampsel’s house, though Schumacher lamented her daughter’s recent move being “too far away” at a whopping 20 minutes.
All three women have mixed emotions about the end of the Skiles Field era. It was the center of the school — more than that, the center of downtown. Many people walked to the games, then walked downtown for a post-game bite to eat in restaurants that no longer exist. Yet, with the stadium in such disrepair, they know it’s for the best.
As for whether the tradition of cheerleading will continue in their family, Sifferlin’s 9-year-old daughter Reese was firm in her answer: “No.” She wants to play basketball instead.
