Not just waving pom-poms
By Schellandie Cherisson, Staff Writer
April 2, 2024
In today’s society, many people refuse to accept the fact that cheerleading is a sport, and do not give this sport the respect it deserves.
Cheerleading should be considered a sport because cheerleaders go to competitions. They are judged on many technical skills.
Preparing for these competitions takes a lot of time, effort, and practice. Cheerleading competitions are no different than a tournament game as cheerleaders have to travel to, most of the time, to unknown and away schools.
They get judged on a lot of different skills they should have that are not easy. And this only makes the whole thing harder.
Josiah Gomes, a freshman student at Norwood High, said that cheer took “skills”, in other terms meaning that no one could just walk in and decide to do cheerleading. It requires dancing, tumbling and stunting skills which are hard skills that are usually not used in other sports but somehow harder than any of these other sports.
Cheerleading “requires athletic ability, athletic training, it requires all of the same kind of background work that other sports do,” said history teacher Eliza Crimmings.
Human Kinetics, a website that provides information related to physical activity, explains the difference between girl and boy sports where it is obvious that women sports are not as supported by an audience as a male sport audience. It is not only cheer that is not supported by people but other female sports are also judged by others.
“Cheer is primarily female in a way,” Says Rachel Noel, sophomore winter cheerleader at Norwood High School, “And I think in this patriarchal society, people think that it’s not a sport because you’re not “competing” but you really are.”
According to Clearinghouse for Sport, a sport is a human activity involving physical exertion and skill as the primary focus of the activity, with elements of competition or social participation where rules and patterns of behavior governing the activity exist formally through organizations. Cheer fills in all of those requirements.
Gitnux, a website that provides statistics, market research and business insights, shows a rate on injuries in cheer and the overall happened to be 1.35 per 1,000 athlete exposures, with the collegiate level having an even higher rate at 2.68 per 1,000 athlete exposures. Concussions make up 5.8% of these injuries, with 56.7% occurring during practices.
“Cheer is mainly waving pom poms for a basketball team.” Said Deandrey Alexandre. It is the most basic stereotype view people have of cheerleading. It is, in fact, not only waving pom poms at basketball players. Cheerleaders go to competitions and play against other schools. They have rewards and standards they should have in order to win.
This is also why retiring is a thing. Athletes need to retire at some point for whatever sport they do because it might affect their body the more they push it to do more work. And since cheerleading is a really dangerous sport that gets a lot of injuries, athletes wouldn’t rather be a cheerleader at an older age.
Cheerleading also requires a team which is not only a group of people who are forced to work together. A team is like a family who decides to have the same desire to compete together for a sport.
“Being a cheerleader is not about the poms, it’s not about smiling, screaming at a game. It’s about being a team and sometimes you can even be a family," says freshman winter cheerleader Maria Vieira.
Cheerleading has all requirements to be considered a sport and people should start changing their insights on their stereotypical opinions.