Cheerleading, or “cheer,” as it is known colloquially by its participants, is often maligned as not being a sport. Those who partake in cheer, or who follow it closely, argue that it is a sport, and this source of acrimony is one of the most heavily debated topics in the modern sports world. Many people believe that cheer should not be considered a sport, but this narrow point of view fails to fully examine all of the facts.

One common attribute of sports is that they can be played for recreation. Any sport, from football to golf to bowling to tennis, is something that you can either watch professionals on television play or go out and play yourself. In this regard, cheerleading falls short of the mark. Opportunities to cheer in a recreational setting are few and far between. Rather, most cheer activities are dependent upon another sport: cheering at a high school basketball game when a team scores points, or a routine done at halftime of a football game. This is one point that many people make when asserting that cheer is not a sport.

Another gripe that many people have with cheer is that it “does not have competitions.” This is entirely inaccurate. Many people’s exposure to cheer comes from seeing them on the sidelines during athletic competitions, cheering for their team. The reality is that there are several cheerleading competitions all across the country every year, and there is even a nationally-sanctioned governing body for the sport at the high school level. Some people disregard these competitions because they do not feature head-to-head competition, as in a football or basketball game. The style of competition in cheer, though, is no different than in golf or tennis or track and field, though, wherein several teams are competing against each other to win. Part of the image problem that cheer suffers from, and what makes it such an easy target for those who would malign it, is that the sport does not get very much exposure on a national or even regional scale.

One characteristic that is shared by both cheer and other, more established sports such as football and baseball is the prevalence of injuries among participants. In football, concussions, broken limbs, and a whole host of other maladies are entirely possible for participants, and every player goes into every game knowing that there is a risk that he will end up being carted off the field on a gurney. These injuries are a part of the public consciousness about football. Because cheer is so underexposed, the general public is unaware of the abundance of injuries that can result from cheer. Because bodies are often being thrown or are doing flips or turns in mid-air, the potential for injury is just as great, if not greater, than in a more “traditional” sport, such as football. Indeed, one of the sports with the fastest-increasing injury rate in the United States is cheerleading.

Because of a lack of knowledge amongst the general public about the characteristics and requirements of cheer, some people continue to accuse it of not being a sport, and will likely continue to do so until they become more educated about it.

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Category: Sports
Keywords: cheerleading,cheer activities,athletic competitions,