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Sergeant, wife revive Ariz. cheerleading team

TUCSON, Ariz. — U.S. Air Force Sgt. David Baxter walks into the gymnasium with purpose. Dressed in his camouflage battle dress uniform, his arms swing in a march cadence; his hat is in his hand. The troops are in formation, doing push-ups.

Back on their feet, they again practice sounding off, and this time, they better get it right. Baxter, 33, is better known as Coach Dave here, where he is off duty from the Air Force and a volunteer assistant coach for the Palo Verde High School Titan cheerleading squad.

He moves down the line, then pauses next to his wife, head coach Sam Baxter, who is the only paid member of the coaching staff.

If Coach Dave is the disciplinary muscle of the team, Coach Sam is the brains, and together they have brought structure to a struggling cheerleading program, making it a source of school pride and a training ground for life to the girls on the squad.

Sam Baxter, 32, came to Tucson when her husband, Sgt. David Baxter, was assigned to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in August 1997. They have two sons, 13-year-old Dehendrick "Dee" Baxter and 9-year-old David "Chris" Baxter, who both work as managers of the squad, fetching water bottles or running errands.

In 2007, Sam, active in Rising Star Baptist Church, met a Palo Verde cheerleader there who told her the squad had lost its coach. They weren't sure there was going to be a squad.

Sam had cheerleading and dance experience dating to her childhood in Mississippi, but she had never coached.

She was hired as a part-time coach, a post that last year paid her the equivalent of an assistant football coach's earnings for two seasons, since she would be coaching in both the fall and spring.

The captains of the squad welcomed her, then told her that they would handle tryouts and teaching new girls the cheers and routines.

Um, no.

"I," she recalls emphasizing, "will teach you the cheers. And then I will teach you the dance."

Everyone would try out — no favorites, no guarantees. On tryout day she set the tone for a new approach.

When she asked Dave to come to practice to help out with discipline, it was a hard sell.

"I wanted nothing to do with this," he says.

Once he decided to become a part of the coaching staff, it stayed that way.

In the beginning, the edge was hard, and the abrasiveness that he carried was straight military.

"What I do with the airmen is exactly what I do with the girls," Coach Dave says.

The Baxters are committed beyond practices, games and competition. They don't leave campus until everyone has been picked up. Dave mixes all the music for the competition routines in his home sound studio. They've attended school plays, graduations, birthday parties and even talked to the police when some of the girls were threatened by other students.

They have canceled performing at basketball games when many of the girls had a lot of homework to do.

Taking the extra steps gets both them and their program noticed. Assistant Principal Larry Martinez has been at the school for about six months and oversees all activities and athletics. "She's been a boon for the entire athletic department," Martinez says of Coach Sam.

"She works well with the other coaches, and they have instilled a structure and discipline to the program that wasn't there before."

So what do the coaches get out of it?

"I'm not coaching a cheerleading squad," Coach Sam says. "I'm making young women.

"It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I want to make sure that when somebody comes up to them at some point and says, 'I don't like the way you're doing things,' that they don't cry. I want them to say, 'Show me a better way.' "

It's not about controlling who they become or what they do, Coach Dave says, it's more about holding them to a higher standard. You don't have to become a doctor or a lawyer, but if you're going to do something, be the best.

"You can be a garbage man," he says. "But be the best garbage man there is. Be famous for being a garbage man."

And now that the precedent has been set, there is no backing away.

"I came from not wanting to do this," Coach Dave says, "to the point where it is required of me to do this. And I actually like doing it. They're like my daughters now."

"If I can reach just one," says Sam, "then it makes it all worth it. Ain't enough money in the world to take away that feeling."