Cheer up: giving it the old college cry, our Small Business of the Year scores as a cheerleader for cheerleading.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Feature

Gwen Holtsclaw knows how you see cheerleaders--as eye candy, meant to give male sports fans something to ogle during timeouts. But she wants you to know you're dead wrong. She has built her business around the premise that cheerleading is as much a sport as women's soccer or cross-country. "These girls have steel abs and can run six-minute miles," she insists.

Fayetteville-based Cheer Ltd. plans and peddles cheerleading events--competitions, camps and coaching clinics--and sells cheerleading merchandise, mostly at its events. As its president, Holtsclaw is, in essence, a cheerleader for cheerleading. And if that business sounds about as substantial as a pompom, consider this: She manages a 30% profit margin from her roughly $2.5 million of annual sales.

Her passion for cheerleading and, more important, for her business is part of what made Cheer Ltd. this year's BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA Small Business of the Year. Sometimes, being successful in business means seeing profits where others just see a lot of leg. Judging the competition, sponsored by BB & T Corp., were Mark Schaffner, president and CEO of the Ben Craig Center, a business incubator affiliated with UNC Charlotte; Scott Blackwell, president of Flat Rock-based Immaculate Baking Co., last year's winner; and David Kinney, BNC's editor in chief.

Holtsclaw, 58, started cheerleading in grade school at the Red Shield Boys Club in Gastonia, where she grew up and her dad was a plant manager for Burlington Industries. In junior high and high school, her enthusiasm and perfectionism helped her become head cheerleader. While she was in high school, her father's job took the family to St. Pauls, near Fayetteville.

She enrolled at UNC Greensboro in 1963. Homesickness made her first semester miserable. "So I called my mama and said, 'I want you to go get me an application to that little school in Fayetteville.'" Her mother's response: which school? But with a few phone calls, her mother figured out she was talking about Methodist College, where she transferred in the middle of her freshman year. "From that point on, I was a Fayetteville girl. I loved Methodist. I loved the small campus." And she loved the cheerleading squad, which she joined in 1964.

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She also loved Methodist's soccer coach, Mason Sykes, whom she married after her sophomore year. After graduation in 1968, she taught English and coached the dance team at Pine Forest High School. In 1970, Methodist Athletic Director Gene Clayton asked her to organize a week-long cheerleading camp for the college, which was trying to increase revenue with summer sports camps. She had taken a leave from teaching to have her first child and planned the camp during his naps and at night.

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