You may not know this, but I am actually a long-standing and revered member of the national (and international) competitive cheerleading community.

In an extremely nice gesture a couple of years ago, some of the gals over at the NSCA (National Society of Cheering Arts) decided to name a low-level meet in Galveston after me as a lasting memorial to my considerable body of work. Little did they know that after the dome implosion incident in Dallas in 1998, the Eric J. Lubbers Invitational would become the final qualifying meet before nationals in the entire Texarkana area.

The full name of the meet was too clumsy for the kind of repetition a meet of this size requires, so the coaches and judges began to simply refer to it as “The Eric”:

Real source: Broomfield High School cheerleaders participate in some national competition. You can’t spell America without Eric.