Helena Fields News Today

It was impossible to bury the jubilation brought to the table by hundreds of little girls and young ladies on cheer teams from Boston, Brockton, and Providence who packed into the Madison Park gymnasium on Saturday for their Pop Warner league’s first-ever meet in the intense, growing world of youth cheerleading.

At a recent Boston Raiders Pop Warner football practice at the program’s temporary Hyde Park home, scores of kids from Dorchester and Mattapan could be seen across the field wearing shoulder pads and throwing around the football with excitement. But the adults behind the program tout that the ideas of mentorship, discipline, and structure within the game are what has produced