Cheerleading Is Not as Easy as It Seems

WE GOT SPIRIT, YES, WE DO!! WE GOT SPIRIT, HOW ABOUT YOU!!!? When thinking about a sport, the typical sports that come to one mind is football, basketball, baseball, and even soccer. All of which are considered some of America’s favorite sports. When talking or thinking about cheerleading, it does not fit in the same category due to a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is the lack of a primary target to execute with a ball included. According to the definition given, “cheerleading is a sport involving the performance of organized cheering, chanting, and dancing in support of a sports team at games.

‘ As one can see, it even states that cheerleading is a sport.

However, that definition given is more of a description for what is called sideline cheering, which is not considered a sport. Even though those things play a huge part in cheerleading, that is not all that comes with it. Cheerleading is more than pom-poms, jumping and dancing around, and short skirts.

Me being a cheerleader of many years, I know firsthand about the immense measure of physicality, aptitude, adaptability, and endurance that is involved with this sport. Other than the obvious things, cheerleading also involves physical contact and competition, which is where the description of competitive cheering comes in. I think that some of these opinions are blinded due to the failure to distinguish between sideline cheering and competitive cheering. In this paper, I will be addressing some points and explaining why cheerleading is a sport and what people should also believe.

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Before I get into details, I think that it would be best for me to explain the meaning of a sport. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a sport is, “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” So, as one can see, competitive cheering definitely fulfills the criteria. As indicated by The Women’s Sports Foundation, to be viewed as a sport, it must be a physical movement that includes moving a mass through space or defeating the obstruction of mass. In cheerleading that is viewed as stunting. It needs to include “challenging’ or going up against/with an adversary is required, which are cheerleading competitions.

It must be represented by tenets that unequivocally characterize the time, space, and reason for the challenge and the conditions under which a champ is pronounced. In a cheer competition, you have a time constraint, mat width and length, and score sheets. Last, yet not least, it must have Acknowledgment that the main role of the opposition is a correlation between the general abilities of the members. An example is the Cheer National Championships that are appeared on ESPN. As one can see, cheerleading is four out of four. The Women’s Sports Foundation clarifies that to be viewed as a sport, the physical movement must incorporate the above-characterized components. This is the place where your contention closes. Although, these are just a few basic points, but I will now begin to get into the deeper things.

Cheerleading is very physically demanding. There is a combination of dancing, tumbling, stunting, and jumping put into work to create a routine. One of those things that requires the most physical exertion, is stunting. If one does not know, stunting is any skill in cheerleading involving sitting, squatting, or even standing on one another, such as, tumbling, a pyramid, mounting, or tossing. There is a flier, the one that is thrown in the air, and there is a “base,” the one that catches them in different positions. To perform such activity, endurance, cooperation, durability, equity, and timing are all required. While researching for this paper, I ran across an article worth inserting, “Cheerleaders practice for hours and hours to be able to do elaborate stunts and learn specific routines.

They condition their bodies to be able to do flips and tumbles, throw other people into the air and catch them. Flyers have to be able to flip and twist in midair, or hold her entire body weight in perfect form when oftentimes being held up by just one of her foot.” There are plenty of football, basketball, volleyball and baseball players who are unable to contort their bodies to do the same stunts cheerleaders do.” (Ruder, 2017). Imagine throwing someone, with the same weight or more as one, into the air and catching them with bare hands. It may sound and look easy, but it’s more than that, especially if it includes tricks in the air. Even athletes of other sports can’t even begin to prepare their minds or bodies to go through much effort to perform such rigorous tasks. This is just to explain that cheerleading comes with putting your body through intense exercises to perform these different extreme tricks.

Another point that I would like to make is that cheerleading requires a lot of hard work, practice, and technical skills. Well, competitive cheerleading at that. During competition season, we practice at the least five times a week for about 3 to 6 hours each day. Sometimes every day for a great number of hours, depending on how close we are competition. Amid practice there is stunting, tumbling, formation, jumping, and conditioning happening. All being things that are very exhausting and extremely hard to do. I used to get tired just listening to what we had to do, so just imagine doing those things for hours straight with no rest. You’ll be lucky to get a water break if your coach is being nice. These activities may seem easy and fun, but in reality, it is very difficult and takes much work to perfect. The key is to practice until perfected, that is why it takes much time, training, and dedication.

Here is where things get deep. Cheerleading is known to be one of the most dangerous sports in America. It holds the record of having some of the most severe injuries for sport. According to the American American Academy of Pediatrics, it was reported in 2012 that cheerleading is ‘accounted for 65% of all direct catastrophic injuries to girl athletes at the high school level and 70.8% at the college level’ between 1982 and 2009. Some people even consider this to be more dangerous than football, but who am I to say? I’m just going off what the PEOPLE say. Unfortunately, with all the tumbling and stunting, cheerleaders also get injured in the process. According to an article I read once, “From 1980 to 2013, cheerleading injury rates went up 440 percent. Compared to other sports, the overall number of injuries is actually low. However, cheerleading injuries are often much more severe, making up 50-66 percent of catastrophic injuries in female athletes such as a severe injury to the spine (spinal cord) or brain and may also include the skull or spinal fractures.” (Better Braces, 2017) Imagine doing something that you love, but knowing that It can also hurt you. Yes, it’s very impressive, but it can also be something way worst if not properly done.