This will be an unpopular opinion. But I’m going to write about it anyways because my brain has been swishing around these thoughts for a while and I need to pull them out of my head so I can put the swirls to rest.
Is cheerleading a sport?
I was a cheerleader. Didn’t start until high school and I can’t recall now why I even decided to try out. Maybe it was my internal desire to climb further up the social ladder? My desire to be more? I can’t remember. Cheering was never my thing. But I made the squad even though my toe touches barely left the ground and I can’t dance for shit. My saving graces were that I’m loud, have a big smile, and I had pretty strong legs back in the day. Some people might call them thunder thighs and they would be right.
Back then, I used to defend cheerleading when people would say it’s not a sport. Do you see what we do? We throw girls up in the air! We lift humans! Or, we are the humans being tossed in the air like pizza dough. We learn cheers and chants and train. How can people not consider that a sport?!
Now, some 20 years later (excuse me as I throw up in my mouth), I am retracting my statement and boldly saying that I don’t think cheerleading is a sport.
Don’t flay me yet. Here’s why.
The definition of a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. Read that last part slowly….competes against another or others for entertainment. Despite how physically challenging cheerleading is, I can’t justify it’s a sport unless you are actually a competitive cheerleader.
Competitive cheerleading is a sport. Those people bust their asses off. I actually think they should rename competitive cheerleading something else because the name isn’t accurate. Those girls and guys aren’t leading cheers. What they are doing is like a mix of dance, acrobats, and gymnastics. Dacrobastics? Acrodantics? Gymacrodance? I don’t know. Something else…but competitive cheer is definitely a sport.
What I did wasn’t a sport. It was entertainment and a bonding experience, sure. There was physical exertion. But I wasn’t competing. Anything on the sidelines of something isn’t a sport. Stand with me.
Soccer is a sport
What made me think about this decades later is my life as a soccer mom. I watch my girls play on the pitch, sweating, strong-arming the opposing team, busting their asses off running up and down the field, calling on their teammates to work together to get the W. They are true athletes. This is a sport. The high fives and hugs when a goal is scored or the tears of frustration when things are not going as planned. That is a sport. The spectators on the sidelines all watching intently (at least when their kid is playing) and cheering or sighing along with the play of the game. This makes a sport.
As a high school cheerleader, I don’t see how I can consider what I did as a sport. We didn’t compete against anyone. Our physical exertion was nowhere near the level I see my girls displaying. We weren’t the focus – the spectators weren’t there to see us, they were there to see points up on the scoreboard. Or socialize. Hell, I got dropped on my face in front of a huge crowd of people at a basketball game and, after I got spatulaed off the court, guess what? The game kept on going. The sport was basketball, not us.
I wasn’t exerting myself on the sidelines or on the court the way my girls exert themselves on the field. Yes, we worked hard to get our cheers and chants right. We worked hard to perfect our stunts. But even our focus was on the team we were there for. All of our cheers and chants were to lift the team or the crowd up. We weren’t inwardly focused on our squad. If one of us messed up or a stunt fell (see above), that was embarrassing. But the real game kept going.
Cheer is fun, but it’s not a sport
As much as I loved my experience as a cheerleader, even with the fact that I ate pine at the abovementioned basketball game, I don’t consider it a sport. It was fun, it was good exercise, and it brought me tons of great memories and an awesome friendship with someone I am still close to today. But my experience with HS cheer leads me to say that it is not a sport. High school cheer is entertainment. It’s a club of students that join together to put on a production, just like drama kids put on a play or musical. Unless you raise it to the level of competing, it just doesn’t equate to a sport. Take this as the opinion of a 38 year old mom and nothing more:)