Cheerleading: Sport or Not?

[groovypq]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

At its most competitive level and highest level of difficulty where people have intensive training and can get hurt:*** Sport.

When it isn't competitive and only has a "clap your hands" level of difficulty: Not a sport.


***That isn't the metric for what makes something a sport.

Sideline cheerleading isn't just "clap your hands" level of difficulty, even if it isn't competitive. Many sideline squads do all of the same elements and have the same difficulty level of competitive squads. In the college ranks, it's usually the sideline squad that competes (i.e. Kentucky, LSU, Alabama, Louisville, etc.).

Also, it should be noted that the judge ruled that competitive cheer is not a sport in its current form for Title IX purposes. It is not fully developed in that format. He writes toward the end of the case:

"In reaching my conclusion, I also do not mean to belittle competitive cheer as an athletic endeavor. Competitive cheerleading is a difficult, physical task that requires strength, agility and grace. I have little doubt that at some point in the near future – once competitive cheer is better organized and defined, and surely in the event that the NCAA recognizes the activity as an emerging sport – competitive cheer will be acknowledged as a bona fide sporting activity by academic institutions, the public, and the law. As the evidence in this case demonstrates, however, that time has not yet arrived."

</soapbox>

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by groovypq

Sideline cheerleading isn't just "clap your hands" level of difficulty, even if it isn't competitive.

I'm obviously talking about the cheerleading (sideline or not) that is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GdWr8n90X4

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by groovypq

Sideline cheerleading isn't just "clap your hands" level of difficulty, even if it isn't competitive. Many sideline squads do all of the same elements and have the same difficulty level of competitive squads. In the college ranks, it's usually the sideline squad that competes (i.e. Kentucky, LSU, Alabama, Louisville, etc.).

This is the case for current and 18 time UCA National Champions University of Kentucky.

Interestingly, the UK Cheerleaders are part of the UK Athletic Department. Cheerleaders may also be on athletic scholarship. However, my understanding is that UK does not count Cheerleading for Title IX purposes.

From The New York Sunday Times Magazine Sideline Acrobats published September 18, 2005.

Cheerleading is, in the popular imagination, the soft, sweet stuff of fall afternoons - the bright colors and big smiles, the irony-free heartland enthusiasm, the sideshow aspect of exhorting players and crowds by way of pompoms and short skirts. But the truth is that cheerleaders, at the college level at least, happen to be serious athletes. The University of Kentucky squad, whose current members are featured in the following photographs [link above], is the best in the country, having won the national championships of the Universal Cheerleaders Association 14 times since 1985. To watch them in training or competition (or at play in a lake) is to see acrobatic artistry at a literally sky-high level - the women soaring through the air, the men hoisting them up on single upturned palms.

To capture the greatness of the Kentucky cheerleaders, the magazine commissioned the Danish photographer Joachim Ladefoged, whose varied body of work includes photojournalism from Albania and Kosovo as well as images of bodybuilders. Ladefoged had the advantage of coming completely fresh to the American cheerleading milieu. "In Denmark, we don't have this kind of tradition," he says. "The guys are always throwing the girls in the air, and from the ground you don't see the guys' faces, because they look up all the time. I had to get around this problem by shooting down from a ladder. It was the only way to capture the faces and their concentration and at the same time completely fill the frame with flying bodies.


© Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times - Members of the University of Kentucky team practice their high-flying routine before the national cheerleading championships. Although 97% of competitors are female, the physical demands of stunts mean that men are often recruited. Surprisingly, cheerleading began as an all-male pursuit, with the first females participating in the 1920s. The University of Kentucky team is seen as the best in the US, having won the championships 14 times in the past 17 years.

Just for fun and comparison, UK Cheerleaders during the Wildcats' 1958 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. (UK's 4th Championship)

[DrPhil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerleading

[jennyj87]

Originally Posted by TSteven

This is the case for current and 18 time UCA National Champions University of Kentucky.

Interestingly, the UK Cheerleaders are part of the UK Athletic Department. Cheerleaders may also be on athletic scholarship. However, my understanding is that UK does not count Cheerleading for Title IX purposes.

From The New York Sunday Times Magazine Sideline Acrobats published September 18, 2005.

Cheerleading is, in the popular imagination, the soft, sweet stuff of fall afternoons - the bright colors and big smiles, the irony-free heartland enthusiasm, the sideshow aspect of exhorting players and crowds by way of pompoms and short skirts. But the truth is that cheerleaders, at the college level at least, happen to be serious athletes. The University of Kentucky squad, whose current members are featured in the following photographs [link above], is the best in the country, having won the national championships of the Universal Cheerleaders Association 14 times since 1985. To watch them in training or competition (or at play in a lake) is to see acrobatic artistry at a literally sky-high level - the women soaring through the air, the men hoisting them up on single upturned palms.

To capture the greatness of the Kentucky cheerleaders, the magazine commissioned the Danish photographer Joachim Ladefoged, whose varied body of work includes photojournalism from Albania and Kosovo as well as images of bodybuilders. Ladefoged had the advantage of coming completely fresh to the American cheerleading milieu. "In Denmark, we don't have this kind of tradition," he says. "The guys are always throwing the girls in the air, and from the ground you don't see the guys' faces, because they look up all the time. I had to get around this problem by shooting down from a ladder. It was the only way to capture the faces and their concentration and at the same time completely fill the frame with flying bodies.


© Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times - Members of the University of Kentucky team practice their high-flying routine before the national cheerleading championships. Although 97% of competitors are female, the physical demands of stunts mean that men are often recruited. Surprisingly, cheerleading began as an all-male pursuit, with the first females participating in the 1920s. The University of Kentucky team is seen as the best in the US, having won the championships 14 times in the past 17 years.

Just for fun and comparison, UK Cheerleaders during the Wildcats' 1958 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. (UK's 4th Championship)

Every girl/guy from my HS/competition teams dreamed of going to UK and being on that team.