AMA: Cheerleading is a sport

This guy doesn't understand how anybody can question any decision that would benefit cheerleaders.

 

I don't consider it a sport but I knew a few very smart cheerleaders.
One went on to the Ivy League and became very successful at bar.
Cheerleading was used only to spice up the academic resume.

 

Hey, Lyla Garrity wound up at Vanderbilt.

 

It's more a sport to me than freaking golf.

 

There's not really any athletic department money to get their fingers into, not in most places where teams conduct fundraisers for pretty much everything and the school districts only pay for coaches and facilities. What this ruling could do is ensure that cheerleading coaches, or whatever you want to call them, are actually trained in some way. There are a lot of catastrophic injuries in cheer and I think that stems from poorly trained coaches pushing girls to do dangerous stunts without regard to safety.

But in regards to the sports section, no, cheerleading will never be a sport.

 

I wouldn't bet on that. If more state associations acknowledge it as a sport, as New York's has already done, that gives cheerleader parents ammunition when they scream for coverage. I remember how thrilled a former SE of mine was when that state's association officially ruled that it would not be a sport because he could always remind anybody who complained about that fact. All it takes is enough complaints and a higher-up who is willing to listen and you've got cheerleading results and stories in your sports section.

 

Doesn't matter. What's already happening is that papers are trimming coverage of high school sports pretty much across the board. If we're not doing much with, say, golf or track or tennis or softball other than agate, then cheerleading parents can bitch all they want but won't get stories. Agate? Who cares? Just a paragraph of team scores, I guess.

 

That would be applying logic and reason. There are plenty of newspaper higher-ups who don't do that when they get stuck listening to some parent (or parents) complaining.

 

Yeah, the cheerleaders at my local high school and at college often do their "2-4-6-8 who do we appreciate!!!" cheers in the middle of their uneven parallel bars routine, while they are doing their layout sequence on the beam or at the apex of their vault.

A 10-year-old Level 8 gymnast has more athletic skill than a high school or college cheerleader. They are booty-shaking eye candy, with minimal tumbling skills when compared to gymnasts ( I make that comparison because that's who they often compare themselves to). Period.

The college down the road sponsors a competitive cheerleading team. They try to make it sound legit by calling it acrobatics and tumbling. They just won another "national championship" by beating the four or five other teams that sponsor it. The NCAA doesn't even recognize it as an emerging sport. Because it's not.

 

Sport or not, it sure does beat the shit out of some of those girls. Lots of knee braces, splints, etc., in evidence among the squad.

Also, and this may not be the case elsewhere, but cheerleading can be an expensive endeavor. Good friend's granddaughter cheers at my son's high school, and per my friend the upfront cost to the parents is about $3K to $4K. A lot of that is, of course, nonsense stuff -- the ribbons and the tee-shirts and the jackets and the yoga pants, etc. -- but apparently a lot of it is seen as necessary in this day and age.

 

Nobody ever raises more money at a car wash than the cheerleaders do.

Maybe the boys' water polo team if they catch the soccer moms heading out on a Saturday.

 

Tell me about it.