Court rules competitive cheer is not a sport

Competitive cheer always seemed, like marching band, to be a perfectly good activity that had rules and an arbitrary scoring system created for it so it could -- in an artificial way -- create competition out of activities that were never intended to be competitive.

What's happened is that most high school marching bands entertain their parents and themselves, but spend every halftime (if they bother to show up, after all, it's competition season) playing the same esoteric minor-key show, complete with the quiet part in the middle and the loud flag flourish at the end. Playing the school song and trying to entertain, well, that's beneath them.

Same with cheer. It was an activity intended to coordinate the cheering at games. Somewhere along the line, someone saw a way to make money off of it by turning it into a major competitive event, and it somehow turned into gymnastics without the apparatuses or the expense. And suddenly, cheering at games became the province of the kids who weren't good enough to make the "real" cheer team. If you're not cheering for a team, it's not cheerleading. It's tumbling in skirts and glitter.

 

Not sure where you live but down here halftime at every godddamn high school football game is at least 30 minutes long so BOTH goddamn bands can perform. If you cover high school football, you're treated to 10 games of that.

Probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen at a high school football game happened several years ago when two Dallas suburban teams were trying to get a game in around some serious thunderstorms.

After a lenghty lightning delay in the second quarter, the smart thing to do would be to skip halftime and go straight to the third quarter in an attempt to finish the game - well, except for the fact that BOTH FUCKING BANDS had to perform their halftime routines, which meant that they did indeed break for halftime. As a result, the game had to be called early because they couldn't finish before the second storm hit town late in the second half.

I wish I lived in a state where bands didn't give a shit about performing at halftime.

 

Oh, the bands perform in Indiana. If they show up. They just perform the same boring show over and over, usually full of music I've never heard of, lots of flag-waving, a real quiet part where they play xylophones, and then a really loud flourish that usually features the same DUN-DUN-du-du-du-DUNNNNNNN repeated a few times over and over. I'm sure it impresses judges. It sure as heck bores me to tears. Of course, their show HAS to run over ... I've seen a football coach and a band director go nose-to-nose because they almost got a flag thrown because the band parents took forever to get their d*mn props on the field and the band was still playing while the players were warming up. I've also watched the promoter of a multi-game event at an NFL stadium scream into his walkie-talkie to get the effing band off the effing field because it was slowing up the schedule. To these band people, it's all about the competition show -- you can't deviate from it. Then, two weeks later, the same band won't show up for the biggest game of the year because "there's a competition the next day and they need to get some rest."

The non-competition bands stand in an arc and play Beatles songs, or create a new show every year, or in the case of one school we cover, comes out, performs the school song, the state song, the national anthem and actually *marches* into formations that make sense (like the outline of the state). It's a helluva lot more entertaining than "competition" band.

That's how "competition" has fouled up band. They show up, but they really ruin the experience for the rest of us.

 

Seriously, by Week 4, I've seen the routines of the band and the cheer squads enough times that I have it memorized. You really want me at a competition for either? TURN ON THE FREAKIN' SCOREBOARD! As freaky as amateur boxing is, or as convoluted as gymnastics or figure skating can get, at least there's some sort of score on display at the end of a routine. Want warm fuzzies and participation ribbons all around? Fine ... but if you want to be taken seriously, scoreboard!

 

Both bands perform? Wow. I'm a former band geek, and I think that's overkill.

Here, only the host school's band performs at the half -- and halftime is only 15 minutes long, so bands know to get on and off the field quickly.

 

Oh, bull. Anyone watching the Olympics can see there is no shortage of legitimate sports in which women can compete. Find scholarships in some of those.... even gymnastics.

 

Sarcasm.

 

Meh. I think this is mostly bullshit. Maybe it's because the state I live in doesn't sanction HS cheerleading. Yet, cheerleading is big here.

Cheer and gymnastics have a lot of similarities, but they're not the same. For one, gymnastics is primarily an individual exercise and cheer is primarily (not exclusively) a team one.

My daughter does cheer and takes it very seriously. Do I think it's a sport in the sense of the way sports are traditionally defined? No.

But does cheer require a significant amount of athletic acumen and precision? Yes.

I liken it to ballet or dance. Both require athletic talent too, dance can be judged, but neither is a "sport".

 

yeah, like all these cheerleaders are going to join the school's new roller derby team.


actually that would be all kinds of awesome

 

Wow.

 

The biggest difference between cheerleading and gymnastics is that the fundamental reason for cheerleading to exist is for cutesie perky little chickies to shake their stuff in order to reinforce the egos of the big bad and studly boys' football and basketball teams about how truly awesome they are.

In gymnastics you are judged on how well you perform. Judging is erratic and inconsistent, but usually how you are scored has at least something to do with how well you performed the routine, not how well you bounced your bazooms and booty for Tommy Touchdown.

 

When was the last time you went to a cheer competition?