What do you think of when you hear the word “cheerleader”? Does the idea incorporate pom-poms, mini-skirts, chanting on the sidelines of football games or dating the quarterback? In reality, cheerleading is a sport because it involves athleticism, teamwork, and competition.

Still, many people find cheerleading to be more of a popularity act and may argue that cheerleading isn’t a sport, but it has a whole other side to it.

To begin the discussion, 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” (“Sport”). So why is there a debate on whether cheerleading is a sport when it fits all of the criteria? There are two types of cheerleading, school, and all-star. School cheerleading is what people are most familiar with, it involves cheering on the sidelines of sports games and getting the crowd excited, but the cheerleaders do more than just that. There are routines performed that entail stunting, tumbling and acrobatics. Comparatively, all-star cheerleading is more advanced and focuses on the routine rather than the cheers. Both types of cheerleaders equally dedicate their time and effort to the sport. The AwesomenessTV series Cheerleaders portrays the challenging lives of the athletes at practices and competitions. One cheerleader that was interviewed said,  “Cheer consumes your life; I don't have a boyfriend because cheer is basically my relationship” (AwesomenessTV). All-star cheerleaders put in so much dedication to perfect their routines during practices for the competitions. Other athletes can commit their time to their sport and get recognized for it by schools, but cheerleading doesn't get recognition for doing the same.  

Injuries often occur with cheerleaders because it is a high-intensity sport and requires high-level skills that can be dangerous to people who are inexperienced. Many think that body contact sports like hockey and football have the most injuries. However, The Sports Medicine Center at Children’s Colorado Hospital found in a recent study, “cheerleading was ranked 16th among sports with the highest number of injuries” (“Cheerleading”) and is known to be, “the most dangerous sport for females because of the high risk for concussions and ‘catastrophic’ injuries, which are classified as injuries that result in long-term medical conditions, permanent disabilities or a shorter lifespan” (Schaffer). For example, I have experienced getting injured from cheerleading, three years ago during one of my seasons of all-star cheerleading, I injured my knee landing from a backflip, and I wasn't able to compete or practice for two months, this devastated me because it was pretty much all that I had to do. Not only was I injured, but half of the cheerleaders apart from all-stars had braces on some part of their body or were injured.

A huge factor of cheerleading is teamwork other sports focus on how an individual performs, but a cheerleading routine is two minutes and thirty seconds to showcase all of the combined efforts in the routine perfectly in unison. If one person is off on timing then the entire routine looks messy and out of place. During practices, if the team is not cooperating as one which causes the routine to not look right, coaches will require them to work until it is perfect and organized.  

A “touch-out” in cheerleading is when an athlete bails out, falls or touches the mat coming out of a tumbling skill, and when it comes to competitions, this results in a deduction. Once when I was competing, my team wasn't prepared to perform. The consequence of this was that most of my team touched-out of their skills, and we placed last in our division. My coach decided that demoting the entire team would benefit us. From this experience, my team began working harder together and we succeeded by winning the rest of the competitions in the season. The teamwork between my team evolved tremendously which required an immense amount of time and hard work.

In 2017, according to The New York Post, approximately four million people participate in cheerleading from elementary school through college. Companies that produce and sponsor the competitions earn, “revenue estimated at more than $2 billion a year and national championships aired on ESPN, cheerleading has evolved into a big business.” (Morgan). Competitions are a big deal in the cheerleading community. It is a chance for the athletes to prove other teams how hard they have worked and compete for the winning title. Competitions are held all over the world, and often require some traveling to.

The world of cheerleading is similar to the worlds of any other competitive sport. Just because they wear big bows, short skirts, and glittery eyeshadow does not diminish the chances of getting injuries, going to time and energy consuming practices, or serious competitions. Do you know of any football players that can do a punch front round off back handspring full?