cheerleading isnt a sport essay

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A Discussion of Whether Cheerleading is a Sport

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Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1389 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Why Cheerleading is a Sport (essay)

Works cited.

• Baruch, R. (2018, January 29). Their turn to be champs North Cheerleader to whoop it up at state contest. Daily Herald.
• Bonesteel, M. (2014, June 10). Is Cheerleading a sport? The American Medical Association thinks so. The Washington Post.
• Delaney, S., Lubeck, M., & Kerr, Z. (2019). Cheerleading injuries: Epidemiology and recommendations for prevention. Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine, 12(1), 123-128.
• Henricks, D., & Sessa, A. (2015). Cheerleading and Title IX: A legal analysis. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 86(9), 47-51.
• LaBella, C. R., & Mjaanes, J. (2016). Cheerleading and the associated risks: A cause for concern. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 26(6), 443-448.
• Linville, D., & Borland, J. (2016). The power of cheer; Cheerleading promotes athleticism, responsibility. The Province.
• National Federation of State High School Associations. (2017). 2016-2017 High school athletics participation survey. https://www.nfhs.org/ParticipationStatics/ParticipationStatics.aspx/
• National Federation of State High School Associations. (2018). 2017-2018 High school athletics participation survey. https://www.nfhs.org/ParticipationStatics/ParticipationStatics.aspx/
• Parker, R. (2016). Cheerleading injuries: A narrative review of the literature. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 15(3), 173-181.
• Temple, R. (2019, January 29). Cheerleading, Title IX and gender equity. The National Law Review.

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Why Is Cheerleading Not a Sport?

Jennifer is a prolific writer with over 10 years of experience in online writing. She enjoys creating quotes and poems.

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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.

Sorry, cheerleading is not a sport

At its annual meeting in Chicago recently, the American Medical Association unexpectedly voted to adopt a policy designating cheerleading as a sport. It encouraged appropriate accrediting bodies to do the same.

It's about damn time, right?

Not so fast.

The AMA based its decision on an intention to increase safety protocols and funding for high school and collegiate cheer programs, which would be a positive outcome. The problem is that, by declaring cheerleading a sport, the AMA is taking a stance that could effectively eliminate cheerleading as it exists today.

Allow me to explain.

I was a cheerleader at the University of Florida and spent summers teaching at cheerleading camps around the country. After graduating from UF, I spent my first two years in New York City working as an editor for American Cheerleader magazine.

I long ago decided to avoid the cheer-as-sport debate. In this case, though, I must engage.

Cheerleaders are athletes. College cheerleading was as physically demanding and mentally challenging as any activity in which I've participated. It afforded me the opportunity to travel the country, paid for much of my schooling and challenged me athletically on a daily basis.

But cheerleading is not a sport.

Most definitions of "sport" include a focus on competition. That is how the NCAA, the National Federation of State High School Associations and the Women's Sports Foundation define a sport. Oh yeah, Webster's says that too.

Sports teams exist to compete, not to perform and entertain or support another group that competes. In the cheer-as-sport conversation, this is the most important element to understand. One can be an athlete and not participate in a sport. And one can participate in a sport and not be very athletic. By definition, billiards and bowling are sports. Backcountry skiing, climbing, ballet and cheerleading are not. I'm fine with that.

Although the athleticism of cheerleaders has risen dramatically since Johnny Campbell led the first cheers at a University of Minnesota football game in 1898, what hasn't changed is the primary focus of school cheerleading: to promote school spirit, support other teams in competition and provide leadership within the school and community. Because of the highly athletic nature of modern cheerleading, annual competitions were created to showcase these athletes on their own and away from the sidelines, and the sport-or-not debate began.

The competition at high school and collegiate national championships -- some of which are aired on ESPN -- is incredible, but these events take place only once per year. That's not frequently enough to satisfy NCAA, NFHS or Title IX sport requirements. And many teams still choose not to compete at all.

If cheerleading squads began practicing and competing enough to satisfy those requirements, they would be forced to drastically scale back the number of games at which they cheer. Or stop cheering at games entirely. The minute that happens, rest in peace, cheerleading.

For athletes who wish to participate in cheerleading solely to compete, there are private all-star teams and STUNT, a new version of competitive cheer that was developed by USA Cheer, the governing body of cheerleading in the U.S. The goal of STUNT is to provide a means for female cheerleaders to compete in the spring season. It is the fastest-growing high school sport and is seeking emerging sport status from the NCAA. Unlike traditional cheerleading, it also meets Title IX eligibility requirements.

STUNT is a sport, as its athletes participate solely to compete. But it is not cheerleading.

In making its recommendation, the AMA said it believes that defining cheerleading as a sport will cause money from school athletic budgets to flow into cheer programs, allowing for the purchase of mats and safety equipment. Schools will begin to provide the same level of safety training for coaches that other teams receive, and cheerleaders will be granted more access to training facilities.

"The AMA recognizes the potential dangers now associated with cheerleading and believes steps should be taken to ensure the health and safety of individuals who participate in the time-honored tradition," AMA board member Georgia Tuttle, M.D., told espnW. "By designating cheerleading as a sport, those participating will benefit from the same robust safety protocols as other designated sports, including properly trained coaches and adherence to rules for the proper execution of stunts."

That's all great in theory, and the AMA's motives seem sincere. More attention to safety is a wonderful thing. In one of the fairest assessments of cheerleading injuries in recent years, FiveThirtyEight's Walt Hickey examined recent injury reports and found that while cheerleading is not nearly as dangerous as it was previously believed to be, what distinguishes high school cheerleading from almost every sport is that cheerleaders are injured in practice more frequently than in competition. That clearly points toward a need for access to safer practice surfaces and more highly trained coaches.

But that is something that can and should happen whether cheer is defined as a sport or as an athletic activity.

Many leaders in the cheerleading community support the ideal that the AMA is advocating; they just disagree with the method. Bill Seely, the president of USA Cheer, says that while his organization and the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, the nonprofit safety education association for cheerleading, share the AMA's goal of decreasing injuries, he believes the medical community is coming at the issue from the wrong angle.

"We believe the best approach is not relabeling cheerleading but ensuring all athletes and coaches are trained and certified and all programs adhere to safety rules," Seely said. "Relabeling cheerleading will change its fundamental nature to a purely competitive sport. We're disappointed the AMA made this recommendation without consulting us or reviewing our safety initiatives, but we hope to work with them toward a shared goal of cheerleader safety."

But first, it's cheerleading that needs to be protected.

Jump for joy! How cheerleading conquered the world, from Lagos to Ho Chi Minh City

It has gone from the sidelines of American sport to become a competitive global phenomenon that might one day make the Olympics. We meet the international teams bringing the cheer

W hen photographer Christian Sinibaldi first visited world champion cheerleaders London’s Unity Allstars Black , in January 2020, he had no expectations. In fact, he admits , he had “a few stigmas associated with cheerleaders”. What he learned that day surprised him. “I loved the energy, the connection between people,” he says. It kickstarted a fascination that would take him around the world to capture a sport on the cusp of global popularity, a project that took him from the markets of Ho Chi Minh City to the tunnels of Lagos stadium.

Cheerleading has long been associated with high school movies and glittery sideline entertainment, but it has a rich history – one that has fascinated me since I cheered at high school in the 90s. My master’s thesis was an ethnography of cheerleading, following a squad throughout a season. For my doctoral dissertation, I wrote a cultural history of the sport. Cheerleading began in the US in the late 19th century, growing out of the civil war and finding a place among the sidelines of elite all-male higher education institutions. There were almost no women cheerleaders until men went to war in the 40s. In the latter half of the 20th century it was feminised and sexualised, before evolving into a competitive athletic endeavour of its own as a result of second wave feminism. It has since been further democratised and radicalised – there are squads of all ages and genders, advocating for all manner of social justice causes.

No longer constrained to the sidelines of other players’ games, cheerleaders now take centre stage, competing for medals in routines of two and a half minutes that consist of stunts, jumps, tumbling, dancing and cheering. The latest variation is known as all-star cheer: athletes divorced from any other sport, who cheer for one another and, ultimately, themselves.

Soon Olympic gold may be on the line. In 2004, the International Cheer Union (ICU) was recognised as the worldwide governing body for cheerleading. With 119 National Cheer Federations and 10 million athletes worldwide, it shows a global demand and popularity within a formalised, scorable system – all-important criteria for Olympic consideration. The International Olympic Committee recognised cheerleading as a sport in 2021, an important distinction that may one day lead to official Olympic status. The ICU offers training and certification for coaches – of particular importance in places such as Azerbaijan, Ivory Coast and Mongolia, where cheerleading is less common.

Main image: junior members of Kazakhstan’s Cheer Republic team perform in Independence Square in the capital city, Astana, in front of the Hazrat Sultan mosque. Above: members of Athens’ Amazons cheerleading team practise in the seaside suburb of Vouliagmeni

For Sinibaldi, this meant he could travel the world in pursuit of new cheer communities. “I’m very interested in how photography can be used as a tool to talk about communities and people,” he says, “so the sport in this case is an excuse for me to talk about how young people are helping each other to grow.”

Vietnam’s Saigon Beast team, which formed in 2017 and came third in the Asia Cheerleading Invitational Championships that year, has grown from just six members at the start to 20 today. Husband and wife coaches Hung and Trang Le are self-taught, spending hours on YouTube learning techniques and practising choreography. She is a real estate agent and he works part-time in marketing and event management, while trying to move to full-time coaching. Cheerleading is the couple’s passion and special bond – they create everything, from the costumes to the stunts and routines, and dedicate all their spare time to the team.

Sinibaldi captured the squads both in and outside of their typical practice spaces: in one of the oldest parts of Ho Chi Minh City; the streets of London’s Soho; a market in Lagos where he involved so many local people to help him stop the traffic that he earned himself a nickname that roughly translates as “the special one”. The shoots weren’t without their dangers; Sinibaldi recalls a cheerleader falling on his head during one. Competitive cheer, with its heightened focus on stunting and tumbling, can lead to injury: concussions, broken bones and sprained ligaments are common.

Whether he was in Athens in Greece or Astana in Kazakhstan, cheerleaders talked to Sinibaldi about teamwork. “Everybody was saying that you might see the flyers performing this incredible stunt,” he says of those at the top of a pyramid or being thrown into the air, “but obviously they would be nothing without the base. It is a very pyramidal structure, but everybody plays a fundamental role.”

Cheer Kazakhstan

Senior members of the Cheer Kazakhstan elite national team and junior members of the Cheer Republic team perform in a food market in Astana

Team members include Sofia Dekhtyareva, 15 (left), who likes cheerleading’s ‘acrobatic elements, beautiful and complex jumps, spins and lifts’. Mula Liana, 14 (right), who has been champion of Kazakhstan in 2022 and 2023, and hopes to represent her country one day, agrees, adding, ‘The main thing is not to give up’

Members of Cheer Kazakhstan’s Esquire team go through their paces in front of the Expo 2017 sphere in Astana

Practising in Independence Square

An Esquire team member in a food market in Astana (right) and parents of Cheer Republic team members helping them get ready

Members of the Fox team in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in the east of the country

A Fox training session at the ice hockey stadium

Lagos Cheer Nigeria

Hassana Musa, 32 (centre, in the air), started when she was 26 and says, ‘It’s the hardest thing I have ever done. But I love it because it makes me stand out and makes me stronger. Some parents are not supportive, because it’s dangerous and doesn’t bring in any money. That can make things harder’

Gabi Esther, 16, has been cheerleading for seven years. ‘What I love is that no matter what happens, we stand by each other. Being a cheerleader in Lagos feels very good. Other teams look up to us – when they see our stunts, they are amazed’

The team have been training twice a week, around the main stadium in Lagos and on the streets of Yaba suburb, for eight years. There are almost 100 members who do one or two performances a month

Eniola Aluko, 21 (centre), loves everything about cheerleading: ‘When I tell people what I do, they are really impressed. But I still haven’t overcome my fear of tumbles. I tell myself pain is inevitable for athletes’

Amazons, Athens, Greece

Eva Petrosian, 17, practises on Varkiza beach (top) and in the gym (above). ‘When I first joined the team, aged six,’ she says, ‘the director asked why I had come and I answered, with great confidence, “I am here for the Olympic Games.” We are now very close to that goal. The cheer mat is a happy place for me. Practising every day for hours with the same people leads to incredible bonds’

Eleftheria Xynou, 20, has been a cheerleader for more than 13 years. ‘I love the energy, the teamwork, the discipline and the joy it brings me. It does come with challenges, especially the physical and mental fatigue, but cheer teaches you to surpass your limits. Through it, I experienced the joy of representing my country and winning gold at the 2023 European championships’

Eleftheria Ntani, 13 (in the air), practises with other team members in front of the Church of Agios Nikolaos in Vouliagmeni. ‘Every practice is full of challenges,’ she says, ‘but as a team we work through them’

Unity Allstars Black, London, England

Lauren Gray, 22 (on right), started cheer in 2016 after being a gymnast for eight years. ‘I competed for Team England in 2019, placing fifth in the world! In 2022 I joined Unity Allstars, as a 22-metre flyer, and won silver at the world championships. I am aiming for another win this year’

For Maddie Hart, 23 (above and on left of top picture), doing gymnastics growing up helped her cross over to being a flyer. She competed with Team England in 2023 and says, ‘Performing on the world stage for your country is a feeling I will never forget’

Team members train in the gym (top) and on the streets of Soho

Danyal Golabi, 31, was 19 ‘and wanted to learn a backflip when my course mate dragged me along to cheer. I competed with Queen Mary Angels and in the university world championships, and later joined Unity Allstars Black. After Covid I came out of retirement to rejoin and compete with Team England’

Saigon Beast, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The cheer team practise early in the morning, in Chinatown. The sport has been growing in popularity since 2010, when it was included for the first time in the national sports competition for university students

Hung Le and his wife Pham Thi Thu Trang (left), co-founders and coaches of the team, admit, ‘Our parents don’t approve of our choices and we have had a hard time being accepted. But cheer makes us happy.’ For Nguywn Thanh Trung, 23 (on left, with fellow team member Nguyen Danh Nam), ‘The bond between flyers and bases makes me feel as if I have another family’

Phuong Vi, 17 (above and in the air in top picture), started cheerleading in high school. ‘When I saw it for the first time, it looked so fun and exciting,’ she says, ‘especially the role of the flyer’

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