COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Some of the students at Coronado High School thought the new cheerleader looked a little large.
Members of the football team joked they would never go out with a girl who could lift more weight than they could.
No wonder, because the high school cheerleader was a 26-year-old man.
For nearly two weeks, Charles James Daugherty convinced the 1,500 students and teachers at Coronado that he was an 11th-grade coed, police said Thursday.
Daughtery, using the name Cheyen Weatherly, showed up at the school Sept. 6 purporting to be a transfer student from Greece and offering a high school transcript.
'Cheyen' was a good student and tried out for the cheerleading squad, although 'she' apparently never dressed with the other girl cheerleaders, said police Sgt. Ollie Baltus.
But, at 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds, some people were suspicious of the newcomer.
'Everyone just looked at her like she was so big and everything,' said Gina, a student at the school. 'I remember one time she (Cheyen) wanted to go out with some of the guys on the football team, but they said they'd never go out with someone who could bench (press) as much as they could.'
School officials did some checking on the transcript and discovered it was a phony. Police arrested Daugherty Tuesday on suspicion of felony impersonation and third-degree forgery.
Daugherty has had experience as a cheerleader, Baltus said. Posing as a woman he served with the all-female cheerleading squad of the Colorado Springs Spirit, a now-defunct minor league football team.
'We did our cheerleading tryouts last year and she (Daugherty) made the squad,' said Betsy Acree, leader of the Spirit squad. 'She was great. I have nothing bad to say about the girl, except she wasn't a girl.'
Acree said she discovered midway through the season that Daugherty was a man and dismissed him.
'One of the cutest stories was that one of the guys involved on the football team, a mister macho, mister chauvinistic pig, made a comment about what great legs she had,' Acree said.
