app.com
USA TODAY
Sights and sounds: See how a card stunt comes together at UCLA
Updated 11/20/2009 11:24 AM ET
By Thomas O'Toole, USA TODAY
Photographer Dan MacMedan follows UCLA students — sometimes as many as several hundred — who hold square, color-coordinated cards above their head to create designs, whether a mascot, a flag or simply the school?s letters, U-C-L-A.

In 1908, students at the Cal-Stanford college football game, performed what is considered the first card stunt. The practice still exists. According to Robert David, who helped coordinate stunts as a student at Illinois in the early 1980s and participated in card stunts for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, more than 30 schools were using card stunts in the 1950s, a number that has dwindled to fewer than 10 now.

Posted 11/19/2009 7:08 PM ET
Updated 11/20/2009 11:24 AM ET
UCLA students carry on school spirit tradition