Is It a Sport?

As she flew fifteen feet into the air one little mistake brought her crashing down at just the wrong angle to slip through all three girls below. That one little mistake that no one could help left her with a dislocated shoulder and broken arm. This was only the first of many injuries to occur throughout the season. Only a week later one of our best gymnasts was throwing one of her most simple passes but because of a slight over rotation she fell to the floor and broke her tailbone. These are only two of the many examples showing how dangerous cheerleading has become over the years, yet people still believe cheerleading is not a sport.

Cheerleading is no longer girls in short skirts screaming chants and cheers trying to motivate a crowd; it has evolved into so much more than that. There are two types of cheerleading, sideline and competitive. Sideline cheerleading being what you would see at a football or basketball game, while they are there to motivate the crowd they still participate in dangerous maneuvers such as basket tosses and pyramids. On the other hand, competitive cheerleading is solely based on the tumbling and stunting aspects of cheerleading with a bit of dance involved. While competitive cheerleading is defined as a sport many close-minded people refer back to girls in short skirts dancing and cheering on sidelines when I tell them I am a cheerleader.

Similar to basketball or football, cheerleading has guidelines and rules as well. We are required to stay within the boundaries given, just as other sports are. There are six levels of cheerleading and we are required to follow specific guidelines given for the level we are competing in. We may not win based on how many baskets we made or how many touchdowns were scored, but like gymnasts we are judged and given points on difficulty, technique, creativity, and sharpness. Judges are like our version of referees, they call the shots, they decide if the stunt we did was illegal or not, they hold the power in deciding who the ultimate winner is.

Cheerleading is a team sport as well, with all the danger involved in stunting you have to rely on your teammates to be there if you are going to fall, a flier would get nowhere without her bases. Unlike soccer where substitutes are used if someone is injured, cheerleading teams utilize every person at all times, and if one person is missing whether it's a flier or a base that stunt cannot hit without everyone there and working in sync.

Cheerleading is one of the most dangerous sports a teenage girl could participate in. No protective gear is worn while girls are flipping and being thrown with only a sponge mat below. The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injuries found that cheerleading is the number one cause for serious injuries in women athletes. These injuries come from not only lack of protective gear, but also because it is not recognized as a sport in many high schools the cheerleaders then don't