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Competitive cheerleading, like football and basketball, is a sport. Not only is it competitive, but it is also physically demanding. As a former cheerleader myself, I know first-hand how rigorous it can be. Cheerleaders train just as hard as any other athlete. They spend the same amount of time runn…

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(AP) HARTFORD, Conn. - A federal appeals court has ruled that colleges cannot count competitive cheerleading as a sport when trying to comply with gender-equity requirements, upholding a U.S. District Court decision against Quinnipiac University.

In a decision released Tuesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that competitive cheerleading does not yet meet the standards of a varsity sport under Title IX, the 1972 federal law that mandates equal opportunities for men and women in education and athletics.

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The ruling comes on an appeal filed by Quinnipiac, a school with about 8,000 students in Hamden, which had been successfully sued by its volleyball coach after it tried to eliminate the women's volleyball program in favor of competitive cheering.

"Like the district court, we acknowledge record evidence showing that competitive cheerleading can be physically challenging, requiring competitors to possess `strength, agility, and grace,' the court wrote. "Similarly, we do not foreclose the possibility that the activity, with better organization and defined rules, might someday warrant recognition as a varsity sport. But, like the district court, we conclude that the record evidence shows that `that time has not yet arrived."'

The appeals court agreed with U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill, who found in 2010 that competitive cheerleading did not have the organization, post-season structure or standardized rules required to be considered a varsity sport.

An activity can be considered a sport under Title IX if it has coaches, practices, competitions during a defined season and a governing organization. The activity also must have competition as its primary goal — not merely the support of other athletic teams.

Several volleyball players and their coach had sued Quinnipiac University after it announced in March 2009 that it would eliminate the team for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad.

Underhill ordered the school to keep volleyball and after his ruling, Quinnipiac decided to keep both teams.

"This year marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX, and it's fitting that this decision underscores its importance," said Jonathan Orleans, who represented the plaintiffs. "This is a great victory for Quinnipiac's female student athletes and for women's collegiate sports."

The school's competitive cheerleading team has since renamed "acrobatics & tumbling," and joined the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association, which was formed in part to help develop the activity into a recognized sport, and distance itself from traditional sideline cheering.

John Blake, the executive director of that association, said the court's ruling is based on old information about an activity that no longer exists. He said he believes acrobatics and tumbling will get federal recognition.

"We've done both what the judge asked us to do and what the NCAA has asked us to do, and we've been in communication with the Department of Education," he said. "We're making strides toward it. We're definitely making progress."

Other schools compete in competitions put on by USA Cheer and Varsity Brands Inc., in something they are calling STUNT, with a similar goal.

The idea is to remove the crowd-leading and focus on the technical aspect of cheerleading, such as jumps and tumbling skills, Varsity said.

"Varsity's motivation continues to be to protect the young people who participate in traditional cheerleading, while also creating an alternative discipline that uses cheerleading skills in a new format that would create a separate sport for Title IX compliance purposes," said Sheila Noone, a spokeswoman for Varsity. "The rapid development of STUNT, under the direction of USA Cheer, is well on its way to achieving that goal."

The court also agreed with Underhill's finding that female runners who participate on school's indoor, outdoor and cross country track teams should be counted just once for Title IX purposes, rather than three times as the school had sought.

"The university naturally is disappointed that the court did not rule as it had hoped," school spokeswoman Lynn Bushnell said in a statement. "Quinnipiac will continue to enhance opportunities for our female student-athletes, which include volleyball, acrobatics and tumbling, basketball, cross country, field hockey, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, softball, tennis and indoor and outdoor track and field."

The school did not indicate whether it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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U.S. Appeals Court: Cheerleading not a sport

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(AP) HARTFORD, Conn. - A federal appeals court has ruled that colleges cannot count competitive cheerleading as a sport when trying to comply with gender-equity requirements, upholding a U.S. District Court decision against Quinnipiac University. In a decision released Tuesday, the 2nd U.S.

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Competitive cheerleading is a sport still in its infancy. In the words of federal district judge Stefan Underhill, in a 2010 court decision, "The activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students." But his ruling had more to do with lack of upper-level organization than with athleticism per se. The days of pompoms and hand claps are long over.

Physical Exertion

There is no question that competitive cheerleading is a physically demanding sport. Teams incorporate elements of dance, tumbling and gymnastics to create performance routines. "Stunting" is a particular cheerleading activity that involves cheerleaders sitting, standing or squatting on others, such as in pyramids and basket tosses. These performance elements require strength, stamina, balance and timing, all clear athletic qualities. An example of the required athletic ability can be seen at the University of Alabama: all cheerleaders, at the very minimum, must to be able to do a standing back handspring and a standing back tuck, which is a flip with no hands.

Training

In order to gain and maintain those athletic qualities, a competitive cheerleader must train as hard as any other athlete. Collegiate-level cheerleaders report spending as much time practicing as their peers in other varsity sports. In addition to attending cheer practice to practice stunting, tumbling, and dancing, cheerleaders must also weight lift and work out several times a week. University of Kentucky cheerleader Maurice Grant, who also played football and ran track in high school, told the "Kentucky Kernel" "I think (cheerleading) is definitely a sport. You work just as hard as anyone else."

Coaching

Competitive cheerleading is directed by a coach, much as other team sports are directed by a coach or coaching staff. The coach will direct the routines, supervise training and motivate her charges to compete at their highest level. Coaches are trained not only in supervising stunting but in safety as well. Some coaches are highly sought-after; the University of Oregon's Felecia Mulkey, for example, was recruited after a nationwide search.

Competition

For an activity to truly be considered a sport, it must involve competition against others. In competitive cheerleading, squads compete against each other in a head-to-head fashion and are evaluated according to a standardized set of rules. This point is the real bone of contention when it comes to questions about cheerleading as a sport. Many squads still primarily exist to support other sports teams. Moreover, there is no one overarching governing body or set of rules for the sport of cheerleading; instead there are several independent organizations that sponsor their own championship tournament. Nonetheless, members of each of these organizations do compete against each other in scheduled, organized matches, just as in other sports.

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Competitive cheerleading is a sport still in its infancy. In the words of federal district judge Stefan Underhill, in a 2010 court decision, "The activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.

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Many people claim that cheerleading is not a sport. The reasons for this are varied, but essentially, cheerleaders have not traditionally competed (this of course is changing and changing rapidly at that), and many people don't consider doing routines a "sport" in the same way that football or basketball is a sport. So is cheerleading a sport? Or is it merely a past time?

Arguments that Cheerleading is Not a Sport

There are many arguments made regarding whether or not cheerleading is a sport. In addition, many people distinguish between a "yell" leader versus a cheerleader who does stunting versus the competitive All Star cheerleader. Can you say that some cheerleading is a sport while other cheerleading is not? That all depends on who you ask and their definition of sports.

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Sports Require Physical Ability or Skill

One definition of sports is that they require some type of physical ability or skill that has to be learned and practiced. While no one would argue that cheerleaders practice, it can be argued that cheerleading, when it is simply yelling into the crowds, does not require a great deal of skill. Anyone can learn routines and yell into the crowd as long as they smile a lot.

Sports Require Competition

With the advent of competitive cheerleading as an activity in its own right, cheerleading can arguably require competition. However, what if the cheerleaders are just clapping and yelling at games? Perhaps the school doesn't compete. Many schools do in fact have cheerleading squads that do not attend competitions. In this case, does cheerleading qualify as a sport? Not according to the National Federation of State High School Associations and the Women's Sports Foundation's definition of a sport. Additionally, having the competitions required to be seen as a school sport would also likely mean that cheerleaders would be unable to support their teams during games.

Sports Require Strategy

Many would say that cheerleading is not a sport because it does not involve a defined strategy. Even if you are on a competing squad, the goal is to get the judges to think that you do your stunts and routine better than the other squads. However, this would also mean that competitive diving, gymnastics and other similar aesthetic activities are not sports either.

Sports Require Contact with an Opponent

Cheerleaders might make contact with their cheer team, but they don't come in contact with opponents even at competitions. This one of the criteria that makes the "not a sport" argument. However, there are other sports without physical contact like golf or swimming.

Sports Have Consistent Divisions

While schools and teams might compete against one another in cheer competitions, school-based cheerleading doesn't have specific recognized divisions like basketball or football. This, according to Deborah Slaner Larkin, Chief of Special Projects at the Women's Sports Foundation, is one of the reasons that cheerleading shouldn't be recognized as a sport.

Problems with Recognizing Cheerleading as a Sport

However, recognizing drill teams, cheerleading and similar activities as a sport gets far more complicated than whether anyone thinks that cheerleaders are athletes. In fact, the debate delves deeper into Title IX politics, and other issues.

Safety Issues

Not recognizing cheerleading as a bona fide sport means that there is no national governing agency, though the International Cheer Union (ICU) has been given provisional recognition, that determines what type of safety training coaches need to have. This also means that cheerleaders at the college level don't have on-site athletic trainers. Orthopedic experts say, after looking at the statistics, that many cheerleading injuries could be prevented with proper safety precautions. As a result, one could easily make the argument that, for the sake of the cheerleaders themselves, cheerleading deserves sport status.

The Politics of Title IX

For almost three decades, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) actually told schools not to include cheerleading as a sport. Why? The OCR has the task of making sure that schools are not gender biased in their offerings. The sports offerings for schools need to be evenly distributed between girls and boys so that the school is not classified as gender biased. To even out the books, schools were told not to recognize cheerleading as a sport. Some schools have gotten around this by offering a both a spirit club and a cheerleading squad. The spirit club primarily cheers at games and the squad that attends competitions.

Competition Eligibility

Some schools are quite content to keep their status as an after-school club. Why? Because becoming an official school sport makes them ineligible to participate in some national cheerleading competitions. While being considered an official sport would increase safety, it would decrease the opportunities that the squad has to show off their skills.

Deciding Whether Cheerleading Is a Sport

Whether or not cheerleading is a real sport is a question that may never be settled. Although there are good reasons to consider it a sport and it certainly meets some accepted criteria of being a sport, there are many who will never consider it more than an after-school club. One thing is certain; cheerleading is increasing in popularity so much that it might launch itself into sport status without having to try very hard.

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Why Is Cheerleading Not a Sport? | LoveToKnow

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Many people claim that cheerleading is not a sport. The reasons for this are varied, but essentially, cheerleaders have not traditionally competed (this of course is changing and changing rapidly at that), and many people don't consider doing routines a "sport" in the same way that football or basketball is a sport.

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'Cheer' Shows the Dangers of Competitive Cheerleading. So Why Isn't It Considered a Sport?

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The activity is not recognized as a varsity sport by the NCAA, and courts have ruled it doesn't meet Title IX guidelines

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Controversial questions about cheerleading, from uniforms to athleticism, have surfaced in news and headlines. But the real question is should cheerleading be considered a sport?

Cheerleaders would argue that it is, in fact, a sport. However, I disagree. Though cheerleaders endure after-school practices and even participate in cheering for their team, one must carefully evaluate the definition of a sport.

A sport can be defined as an activity that engages in competition and follows rules accordingly. Cheerleading is not commonly considered a sport because of the inability to compete against an opponent. It is an activity solely dedicated to entertain and motivate the crowd during sports events. One of the most important requirements of a sport is to compete against another opponent, not just cheer to support your team.

When you think of a cheerleader, you might think of a girl shaking her pom-poms, shouting at the top of her lungs and cheering for the home team - not competing against an opponent. Though some schools and universities participate in competitive cheerleading, the majority of cheerleaders only root for their team in the hopes of the team winning a game.

According to the ThinkQuest Library, statistics show that only 15 percent of the cheerleaders in the United States compete; therefore, cheerleading should not be considered a sport. Cheerleading, however, can be defined as an activity that involves a physical act of stunting, dancing and tumbling.

The athleticism of cheerleaders is unquestionable. To perform their routines, cheerleaders are often spotted doing flips in the air, lifting people from off the ground and some even do backflips.

Statistics show that more than 80 percent of cheer athletes have been injured during practice, according to the ThinkQuest Library. This proves that cheerleaders have the tenacity, strength and flexibility of any other sportsman.

However, since only the minority of cheer squads compete, it would not be ideal to classify cheerleading as a sport. For now, cheerleading can be fairly classified as an activity, instead of a sport.
Brea Darnell is a student at Rodriguez High School and writes for the school newspaper, The Stampede.

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Definition, statistics proves cheer is not a sport

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Controversial questions about cheerleading, from uniforms to athleticism, have surfaced in news and headlines. But the real question is should cheerleading be considered a sport? Cheerleaders would argue that it is, in fact, a sport. However, I disagree. Though cheerleaders endure after-school pract

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The rigorous activity is dominated by female athletes-and is growing in legitimacy and popularity.

In one episode of the reality-TV show Cheer Squad, four members of a competitive-cheerleading team sit on blue mats at their gym discussing a common problem they face. Their all-girl squad, known as Cheer Sport Great White Sharks, is a two-time world champion-but they have a hard time getting respect for it.

"You know what my biggest pet peeve is with cheer?" 16-year-old Nubs (the team goes by their nicknames) asks the group. "Everyone just doesn't think it's a sport."

"People think we use pom-poms and dance around," her teammate, 17-year-old B.H., chimes in. "That's so different from what we actually do."

"I've been asked, 'Who are you cheering for?' I'm like, 'no, no, no,'" Nubs laments.

During the series, the team is training for the biggest and most prestigious event of the season, the Cheerleading Worlds competition (this year's three-day contest in Orlando, Florida, ended Monday). As the girls hint, but as few viewers might know, squads like the Great White Sharks don't perform at school football or basketball games. That more visible kind of cheer is known as collegiate, or sideline, cheer, where the primary purpose is to support other sports teams. Instead, the Great White Sharks are All Star cheerleaders. Though similar in some ways to their sideline counterpart, there are a couple of crucial differences. Highly trained All Star teams-mainly made up of, but not limited to, 11- to 18-year-olds-belong to private gyms and aren't attached to any school. Their top goal isn't to support another team, but to win competitions, which is one of the main criteria that determines whether an athletic activity is a sport.

And yet, as the Great White Sharks' frustrations indicate, All Star cheer often has a difficult time being taken seriously. Some of this dismissal has to do with the fact that cheer is one of the rare predominantly female sports. Plus, both sideline and competitive cheerleaders maintain a hyper-feminine appearance (heavy makeup, short skirts, bedazzled spandex uniforms, and styled hair) during routines. But people also tend to lump both types of cheer together-despite the fact that All Star cheer has gained traction in recent years as a sport, and schools don't tend to label sideline cheer as such. Though it's still occasionally mistaken for its sideline counterpart, competitive cheer has nonetheless emerged as a powerful rebuttal to the decades-old belief that cheerleading can't be a sport.

Competitive cheer is relatively new compared with its sideline cousin, which has been around since the 1880s but only opened to women in the 1920s. Now, 97 percent of all cheerleaders are women. The national governing body of competitive cheer, the United States All Star Federation (USASF), was founded in 2003 to establish safety regulations and competition standards, and to certify coaches. The next year saw the formation of the world governing body, the International Cheer Union. Competitive cheer's popularity has since exploded: More than 1,000 teams-again made up of mostly young women- competed in February at the 2017 National Cheerleading Association's All Star National Championship.

Though sideline and All Star share some of the same skill sets, they're now performed for nearly reverse purposes: sideline mostly to entertain, with the possibility of competing if a team is talented enough, and All Star mostly to compete, with their historical role as entertainers always in mind. "Collegiate cheer is based on crowd appeal. All Star cheer is based on skill-building," said Kenny Sampson, the host of the podcast Cheer Talk Radio, who has been coaching at All Star gyms for about 15 years, told me.

High schools and colleges, as well as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, don't recognize cheer in general as a sport, indirectly-but powerfully-influencing how All Star cheer is perceived. In 2012, a federal appeals court ruled that schools cannot sanction cheer squads as official athletic programs-the most recent court decision on cheer's standing as a sport. In that particular case, Quinnipiac University tried to eliminate its women's volleyball team in order to fund its competitive-cheer squad, which the judge said was "too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic opportunities for students." The court cited Title IX, the law that prohibits gender discrimination by educational institutions that receive federal funding.

"[Cheer] does not reach the criteria according to Title IX that every other sport also has to reach for the NCAA to qualify it," explained Deborah Slaner Larkin, Chief of Special Projects at the Women's Sports Foundation, referring to school-based, not All Star, programs. "There is no structure for competition, minimum financial support, and there aren't consistent divisions."

Under Title IX, schools that receive federal funding must give male and female students equal opportunities to play sports, but not necessarily the same sports. So by adding a mostly female cheer squad to its athletic roster, a school can cut another, perhaps more expensive, women's team-as Quinnipiac tried to do. And so for women's sports advocates, the issue often isn't so much that cheer can't be athletic, but that schools may use it as an excuse to exclude women from sports dominated by men.
All Star cheer has been eager to distance itself from its school-based counterpart for over a decade.
As a result, unsanctioned sideline cheer squads at schools can't give their female members the same benefits as traditional women's sports teams. If those squads were sanctioned, they'd likely be taking funding away from other teams. Amid all this, All Star cheer has emerged as an appealing third option for young female athletes seeking a more structured, athletically rigorous, and competition-oriented activity. It's also seeing major strides in its broader quest for legitimacy: Last December, cheer received provisional status as an Olympic sport, which is the first step toward its official inclusion in the Games. In other words, this next decade could see members of squads like Great White Sharks facing off on the biggest athletic stage in the world.

All Star cheer has been slowly distinguishing itself from its school-based counterpart for over a decade. Sampson explained that in 2004, for instance, competitive routines still used recognizable "Go Team!"-type chants, which were phased out in the following years. The elements of both sideline and All Star cheer routines remain the same-from pyramids to the familiar pike and spread-eagle jumps-and each uses the same two positions, flyers and bases.

But in All Star cheer, these skills must be mastered at the highest level. All Star cheerleaders must be gymnasts, too, capable of pulling off advanced stunts with impeccable flexibility, balance, and synchronization. "I think it would be very difficult to argue that tumbling, stunting, competitive cheerleading is not a sport," Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Drexel University who specializes in gender equity, told me. "There's high risk-taking. They're getting thrown in the air ... It's undeniable that we have very serious athletes that are very serious about competing."

All Star teams have two to three practices a week, each lasting up to three hours, according to Sampson. Some young women have three to five additional hours of classes to build their stunting and tumbling skills. That's nearly 15 hours per week on top of their regular school responsibilities. Which is not to say that sideline cheer isn't challenging-collegiate cheerleaders can be highly skilled and sometimes even compete, but their squads' primary aim is ultimately to root for another team.

Not so with All Star cheer. Peyton Mabry, a 19-year-old student at Texas Christian University, cheered as a flyer with Cheer Athletics, probably the best All Star program in the country. It has won 20 gold medals at Cheerleading Worlds competitions, the most of any gym; this year it won the silver medal in the senior large co-ed division. "You can think of [Worlds] like the Super Bowl of competitive cheerleading," Mabry told me. Like many of her All Star peers, Mabry is a social-media celebrity: She has more than 584,000 combined followers on Instagram and Twitter.
Cheer is still one of the few athletic activities where the majority of teams are women-only.
Competitions consist of different teams performing rehearsed routines usually lasting two minutes and 30 seconds before a panel of judges-similar to, say, a gymnastics event. The goal at competition is to ensure that every stunt, tumble sequence, jump, pyramid, and dance move is flawless, which requires precise coordination. "If one person is missing from the team, then a stunt group can't stunt, and the pyramid can't go up. There are three people under me that I have to trust not to drop me," said Kennedy Thames, a flyer with the Rockstar Beatles. Thames is only 16, but she practices three or four times a week and typically participates in 10 competitions a year.

Competitive cheer is not only strenuous, but also dangerous. "It's an adrenaline sport. It's rough," Sampson explained. All Star cheerleaders often say what they do resembles more conventionally male-dominated sports, like football and hockey. "If something goes wrong, someone could end up in the hospital," Sampson said. He added that All Star comes with one serious downside: "It's obscenely expensive. Between private lessons, competition fees, uniforms, and travel, it can be anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 a year."

That level of expense puts girls who want to cheer in a tough position. They can either join their school squad and potentially miss out on opportunities they might have on an official sports team (like funding, experienced coaches, and practice time). Or they can deal with the exorbitant cost of an All Star gym and make the most of those extensive resources.

Cheer as a whole is still one of the few athletic activities where the majority of teams are women-only (one equivalent might be gymnastics or ice skating, where women are more likely to become famous). But given the uncertain position of sideline cheer, it's easy to see the appeal of a private All Star gym-a space dominated by female athletes that also adheres to the same demanding standards as any traditional sport.

As a result, competitive cheer's popularity continues to grow with participants and spectators alike. There are currently 4.5 million registered athletes worldwide who are part of the International Cheer Union, and the International Olympic Committee's interest in cheer comes in part from its "high youth appeal." Cheer still has two and a half years of provisional status before it's eligible to apply to become an official Olympic entry, which means it wouldn't make its debut until after the 2020 Games in Tokyo. But if the petition is successful, the Olympics will be cheer's biggest opportunity yet to showcase its potential for athleticism-and to defy the outdated notion that it can't be a sport.

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Why Don't More People Consider Competitive Cheerleading a Sport?

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The rigorous activity is dominated by female athletes-and is growing in legitimacy and popularity.