Is Cheerleading a Sport? Let a Judge Decide.

photogs gotta love to cover that. lots of low angle stuff

 

Interesting little note from the Quinnipac story:

Astonishingly and amazingly enough, competitive girls' gymnastics as a varsity sport in high schools has almost completely disappeared over the last 20 years or so, curiously almost in direct proportion to the rise of competitive cheerleading as a varsity sport.

The objective of competitive gymnastics: To undertake certain athletic activities against a theoretical standard of performance.

The object of cheerleading: To shake your booty and your boobies and show the big boys on the football and basketball teams that hot chicks really dig them.

 

We have a coach for whom every single photo of a cheerleader in motion was inappropriate.

So we quit covering the sport. Screw them and their weird little cult.

 

The battle against cheerleading as a "varsity sport," and thus to get their fingers into the athletic department budget, and take money away from volleyball, softball, gymnastics, girls basketball, girls soccer, girls swimming, etc etc etc, has already been lost.

The next battleground is ... wait for it...

dance team.

 

In case cheerleading is a sport, how the heck do you write about it?

"Suzy had a great day, dancing to the beat and jumping pretty high."

Is it just me, or is cheerleading a sport that is impossible to write about?

 

Oh, it's absolutely impossible to write about, unless every single sentence is "they tried really hard" "they had great energy" "they had great spirit," etc etc, which is exactly the kind of story the mothers/coaches want you to write about it.

 

I don't know anything about cheerleading, but couldn't you write about whether or not the people fell down, dropped someone, were synchronized, got good height when they tossed someone up in the air, and so forth? Seems like it would be writing about gymnastics.

 

The Quinnipac coach calls the competitive cheerleaders "elite gymnasts." That's BS. Any 8-year-old Level 7 or Level 8 gymnast could tumble the pants off any of the college cheerleaders.

It's a cheap Title IX dodge.

 

You know. That's probably the only time I wouldn't mind seeing parents write the story themselves.

 

Since there are male cheerleaders on the squads, how does that affect Title IX?

 

I think this exact case is an all-female squad, so that probably won't come into play right now. Interesting to see if that comes up, though.