While cheerleaders look glamourous and peppy with their pleated skirts and bows, there is much more going on behind the scenes. With rigorous and sometimes dangerous training and performances, I believe competitive cheerleading should be considered a sport.
For years cheerleading has only been looked at as what it’s called, cheering, but in recent years, cheer has developed to become much more. The throwing and catching of girls, stunting multiple people in the air at the same time and tumbling extreme passes are a few components of cheer.
You can dissect cheer into ten categories: partner stunts, pyramids, basket tosses, standing tumbling, running tumbling, jumps, choreography, showmanship, execution and difficulty. Each section is graded harshly and by the decimal. Perfection is scarcely reached as only the best in the nation come close to a 9.9 or even a 10. So, image trying to obtain anything close 10 on all categories.
Months are spent dedicated to each category to strive for perfection only for a two minute and 10 second routine. In cheer, you are based on one performance only for your score. If you mess up even the slightest part of a stunt, bobble on pyramid or a smile fade for too long, enough for a judge to notice, that could cost you first place.
Showmanship might be the most difficult to maintain in cheer. In all sports you are expected to play your best and you are based strictly on skill and who scores the most. Cheer is the same, who will score the highest. However, the biggest part of the routine is how you compose yourself. Cheerleaders are not allowed to look tired, mad or sweaty; cheerleaders are supposed to look composed, happy and perfect. If anything, cheerleaders do more than most athletes. On top of the same hours put into training, they must worry more about the composure of the face and body and how they will appear to judges.
Looking further, a big majority of the scoring is based on stunts, baskets and tumbling. Each stunt takes months to perfect, building the chemistry in a stunt group alone takes time along with figuring out how to throw and catch for the flyer to stand perfectly in the air on only the hands of the bases. Along with that section, baskets are where flyers get launched in the air while they perform a flip or full twist in the air then come back down only a few seconds later to be caught. Cheerleaders also must make sure the catch and throw look perfect, or they will get deducted for execution on looking “sloppy” or not “sharp enough.”
Cheer has developed over the years and the skills required to be viewed as ranked are becoming incredibly hard to maintain. I believe cheerleading should be viewed as a sport as the skills needed might be viewed as more mentally and physically demanding than any other.
If you do not believe competitive cheerleading should be considered a sport, I highly recommend you watch a competition or look back at the videos of Northwestern’s team which just placed sixth at nationals. There are many characteristics to what a sport is, a textbook answer from the dictionary defines it as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” I believe competitive cheer fits this category well.
