Throughout Sanford High School’s football season, a familiar chant was often heard from the stands.
   “Ev-an! Ev-an! Ev-an!”
   But, the boisterous students weren’t chanting for a member of the football team–they were encouraging Sanford’s only male cheerleader, Evan Martin, to do a “flip.”
   When he complied, applause erupted from his friends in the stands.
   His self-confidence is rare for a young man his age. Bucking society’s stereotypical belief that cheering is “only for girls,” the 17-year-old high school senior recently took up the sport of cheering, an opportunity to execute his self-taught tumbling skills.
   He said when he was about 10-years-old, he began experimenting with tumbling on his grandmother’s trampoline.
   His first attempt at tumbling was a back handspring.
   “It’s the simplest upside stunt,” he said.
   He said he never worked with a trainer.
   “If you have an instructor, they will hold your weight (by spotting), but on your own, you figure it out yourself,” he said.
   He progressed from the trampoline to using the walls at school as a springboard.
   “I would run up a wall, kick off and do a flip,” he said. “It was so ill.”   (Translation– “It was so amazing.”)
   The stunt earned him detentions from teachers who scolded him with stern warnings of “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
   But, he said, to date, he’s never been hurt from back handsprings, twisting layouts, round off back handsprings or “no-handed” cartwheels called aerials.
   By the time he was 15, he began to string his tumbling techniques together into more complex routines.
   “I’ve got ill skillz,” he said, slipping into teenage vernacular.
   He moved to Florida briefly during his junior year where he attended South Lake High School and there he joined the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.
   “One day we were on a field day and I just randomly pulled off a round off back handspring,” Martin said. “When my friend Shelly saw it, she was like, ‘Oh my gosh! You have to try out for cheering!’”
   Martin tried out and made the cheerleading team as one of three guys on the team.
   “The three of us counteracted the estrogen,” Martin joked.
   He said having other guys on the team made it “more fun” because they were able to do more stunts and tumbling, capitalizing on one another’s skills.
   He recently returned to Sanford just in time to try out for Sanford High School’s football cheering squad at the encouragement of his friends Sarah Mercer and Jessey Wrisley.
   He said he knows other students, especially guys, tease him when he’s not within earshot.
   “I hear them say things behind my back, but when I confront them, they deny it,” Martin said.
   He said he doesn’t participate in the “cutsie” cheerleading dances and when the cheerleaders perform the “cutsie” cheers, he tumbles and stirs up the crowd with a bullhorn.
   He isn’t effeminate either. His lean, muscular arms possess tremendous strength for lifting and throwing the “flyers” — and catching them.
   Martin said one of the highlights of the recent cheering season was when Massabesic High School and Sanford went head-to-head in a football game. It was so cold that night, Martin said, the cheerleaders formed a huge circle to stay warm.
   “I made my way right to the middle of the circle,” he laughed. “Not too many guys get to be in the middle of 44 girls.”
   He said the hardest part of cheering is the memorization of the routines, the lifting and knowing where to be in order to offer support for the flyers.
   “It’s got to be perfect,” Martin said.
   When he doesn’t do a tumble “just right,” he said he will do it repeatedly until it is right.
   “I guess I’m a perfectionist,” he said.
   He also described himself as an “all around athlete,” having wrestled and played every sport offered at the schools he has attended including soccer, baseball and football.
   “Oh, yeah, and I was on the swim team,” he added.
   He said the only sports he did not try were lacrosse and ice hockey.
   Even though he isn’t playing a “guy sport,” he said he works out in the weight room every day after school to keep fit.
   Football cheering ended, but now Martin is intent on joining the basketball cheerleading squad. He said he is looking forward to the season because it includes more stunts, more tumbling, more dance, and most importantly, competitions.
   “There are state competitions and the New England competition,” he said.
   He said he hasn’t been in a competition yet, but said he is looking forward to it.
   “I don’t crack under pressure,” he said.
   He said he is not the only guy trying out for the team. He said another male student also plans to try out for the team.
   In preparation for the upcoming basketball cheering season, some of Martin’s spare time is spent a Dudziak’s School of Gymnastics in Biddeford where “open gym time” means he can work on his tumbling on the spring floor.
   Martin said he is striving to perfect his “aerial” stunt as well as a “run-jump-front flip.”
   “It’s a really hard feat,” he said.
   He is so passionate about cheering, he said he would also like to be a National Cheerleaders Association instructor.
   “Then I could teach kids at cheering camps,” he said.
   He has already inspired his 6-year-old cousin Logan to cheer as well.
   “He calls me a Ninja when he sees me tumble,” Martin laughed. “He wants to be a Ninja, too.”
   He said he isn’t sure if he’s going to play baseball next or participate in track, but he said track would likely be his choice.
   This summer he hopes to become a lifeguard at SplashTown or AquaBogan and he is currently exploring a CPR and life saving certification.
   Martin is already mapping out his future beyond the summer.
   Ideally, he said, he hopes to be recruited for cheering by Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, Hawaii.
   “I like the three-girls-to one-guy ratio and the location,” he laughed.
   Turning serious, he said he wants to major in aerospace engineering.
   The Navy is another option he is keeping open. He said if he joins the Navy, he wants to be trained in air rescue.
   When he’s not cheering or playing another sport, he enjoys playing Guitar Hero III, a video game in which the player “plays” a guitar-shaped controller as the musical notes scroll down the TV screen.
   Looking back at all the sports he has played, he only has one wish.
   “I wish I had started cheering a long time ago."