Is Cheerleading a Sport? Let a Judge Decide.

Sue Sylvester to testify? "Let me break this down for you, okay? I empower my Cheerios to be champions. Do they go onto college? I don't know, I don't care. Should they learn Spanish? Sure, if they wanna become dishwashers and gardeners. But if they want to be bankers and lawyers and captains of industry, the most important lesson they could possibly learn is how to do a round off."

 

Around here, most schools have:

• "Sideline" cheerleading, where they cheer for the (99.9997% of the time boys) major sport of each season. There is usually one team corresponding with each boys' team -- if they have varsity, JV and freshman football, they have varsity, JV and freshman cheerleading. If they have freshman "A" and freshman "B" teams, they have freshman "A" cheerleading and freshman "B" cheerleading.
  
• "Competitive" cheerleading, in which they go to organized, scheduled competitions. Usually there are varsity, JV, and freshman teams. The "competitive" cheerleading teams are not allowed to go to games to cheer for other teams, but the reasoning behind this I have always been told is not Title IX, but "days of participation" -- the "competitive" team can only "perform" on so many days in a school year. Although I suppose Title IX could have something to do with it too. Incidentally, the "sideline" cheerleaders also hold competitions and their parents and coaches want them covered, too.
  
• "Dance Team." Also usually varsity, JV and freshman units too, and they also perform at (boys) football and basketball games too. Mainly differentiated from "sideline cheer" because all their routines are accompanied by horrible, badly mixed dance music played at filling-rattling volume. (In terms of dress, "sideline cheer" usually wears more or less traditional cheerleading skirts and tops; "competitive cheer" wears more gymnasty-type things, leotards and capri pants; and "dance team" attire ranges from moderately saucy to utterly slutfastic bikini-and-boypants combos.) They have also come up competitions they want covered, too. At many schools, "Dance Team" is currently making a major push for "varsity sport" status, on the rationale they have competitions, etc etc.
  
  
  

The state high school athletic association designated "competitive cheerleading" as a varsity sport about 10 years ago, and holds state championships, so the battle over not covering them is basically lost. There is growing agitation from parents that "dance team" should get the same designation.

They all have one thing in common: they drain money and participants away from legitimate girls' sports, where girls succeed or fail based on their ability to run, swim, hit, pitch, shoot baskets or kick goals, as opposed to the bounciness of their booty or the perkiness of their pups. Or, how good the football and basketball teams they're supposed to be cheering for are.

 

Here's my thing. It's a sport if they only do cheerleading acts in practices or in state-sanctioned (and I mean HSAA sanctioned) events, cheering at a game isn't practice.
Watching that Penn and Teller episode opened my eyes to the amount of injury these girls do hurling themselves around like that.
However, it also showed that the whole thing is so damn corrupt that cheerleading will never be taken seriously as a sport.
You could put cheerleading as a form of gymnastic event, and both would be horrible to write about but at the core they are similar sports.

 

Even among us ink-stained wretches, we have to have enough money among us to pay off this judge.

 

It's funny you say that, because the person who runs the national cheerleading organization Varsity, agrees with you.
If you listen to Penn and Teller, as I always do, you hear that Varsity is a conglomerate that owns everything cheerleading and if it were considered a sport they would have to treat the kids like athletes instead of dollar signs.
EWWWWW I sound like a cheer parent hippy. I need a shower.

 

If booty shakin' ain't a sport, we should just toss out the 1st Amendment right now.

 

I think it is not a sport. But if it helps schools even the score with Title IX without having to cut baseball and wrestling or add some ridiculous women's sport that it really can't afford - I'm all for it being labeled a sport.

FIXED

 

Title IV?

The one time I gave in and went to the cheer competition, as soon as I found out they wouldn't give me the scores --- THE FREAKIN' SCORES -- I walked out. Didn't write anything. Ran a picture. The end. Never again.

 

No. Court dismissed.

 

how about this ruling -- if it is a sport then all the cheerleading does is competes against other teams in competitions. no more cheering at volleyball, basketball or football games. is there any other sport that takes place while another game or match is going on? my guess is no.

 

We've got that fund to kneecap Berman that we haven't spent yet...