The Sport That Helped Me

I understand most arguments with the statement of how cheerleading is not a sport. The majority of the people who make this statement are only the ones who know about cheering at other sporting events, they don’t see the side of cheer that actually is a sport.

The part of cheerleading that I believe to be the main component of it that makes it a sport is only competing. While cheerleaders are standing on sidelines watching other athletes play, that is no where near being considered a “sport”. But, once they have their competitions and all the different components of what is involved in it, that is the sport part.

Sport: “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another”. With only yelling to the crowd and the team being cheered on, there is no skill required. But, for a competitive cheer team, there needs to be some skill involved and practice is required.

When you are on a sports team, there needs to be a strategy involved. The strategy in this case is learning how to perform stunts and incorporate tumbling and jumps. Learning how to do these skills does not happen over night, and it takes much practice and effort.

The other part that people can argue about it not being a sport is that you need to come into contact with your opponent, and cheer competitions only have you compete against your opponent with just your team. But, that brings golfing and swimming into play since there is no physical contact (1).

It seems as if there is never going to be a definite answer to whether or not cheerleading is a sport. Cheerleading is becoming very popular that it might eventually become a sport on its own (1). In my eyes, and the eyes of others that watch the competitive aspect of cheerleading, I think that only competitive cheerleading should be considered a sport. Anyone can stand on the sideline to cheer people on, there is no skill within that but performing at a competition requires skill and strategy.

1. https://cheerleading.lovetoknow.com/Cheerleading_Is_Not_a_Sport

Cheerleading has obviously developed greatly since it started in the late 18th century, but it still has kept the spirit leading tradition. It started off as just sideline cheering for whatever sport, but most likely football. Eventually, there became two different sides/purposes of cheerleading, to cheer on the sidelines and a “highly skilled competing athlete” (1).

For the uniforms, it started off with wearing a sweater and a skirt that went down to almost your ankles. Now that there are more advanced movements in routines and sideline cheers, the uniforms need to have an easier ability for moving around while either stunting, jumping or tumbling. This is why the skirts are now mid-thigh and the shirts are tight. If you are stunting and are trying to catch your flyer from dismounting her, the clothing can get in the way and result in serious injury if it is too big and there is excess material exposed. “Uniform changes are a result of the changing culture since the 1930s” (1). The uniforms we see now didn’t arrive until the 70s.

The way that cheerleading incorporated the stunting aspect of cheerleading was a way of improving team building. It was a way of building trust in your teammates and gaining the ability of working with others (2). Now, stunting is a huge part of cheerleading and it has grown greatly since the start of it all, but no one thinks of it as team building. It is just focused on perfecting it and how it will look when you perform the stunt. With stunting advancing, they had to incorporate safety guidelines.

Cheerleading has become so popular, colleges are pushing to have it recognized as a collegiate sport instead of a spirit activity. But this isn’t the only interesting part of it, the stunting aspect of the sport has been so popular that a stunting sport has been identified. With this, two teams will compete while doing the same series of stunts (2). It’s just like competitive cheerleading but only showing stunting.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerleading#Evolution
2. http://www.chassecheer.com/blog/competitions/the-evolution-of-cheerleading/

Whether you think so or not, cheerleading is a very dangerous sport. You can get injured from doing almost anything that the sport consists of. This is the most dangerous female sport because of how easily you can receive concussions, and other injuries.

Cheerleading isn’t a sport where you just cheer on a team anymore. It has evolved greatly since it has originated back in the 18th century. Stunting, jumping and tumbling were all brought into the sport which made cheerleading more dangerous than it ever was before.

The three main injuries you would typically get from cheer are: wrist, ankle, and knee. There are a lot of running, jumping and tumbling in a routine which can cause a lot of stress on your ankles. It doesn’t just cause stress on your ankles, but your knees too if you don’t land correctly on your feet after a tumbling pass or stunting. It’s a habit when you fall to catch yourself with your hands, and when you do that you can either break your arm or severely injure your wrist. Another way you can injure your wrist is by stunting, basing puts a lot of strain on your wrists.

The most important thing to do to prevent injuries is to always warm up before practicing, and that is the case with all sports. All my years of cheering I have warmed up the same way every practice, we start off by running and then have a 20-30 minute team stretch. Another thing you can do to prevent injuries is to always say no if you don’t feel comfortable with performing something that seems too dangerous.

Surprisingly, it was an all-male activity, starting in early 1877. Thinking about how cheer is viewed today, you are considered weird if you participate in this sport as a male.

Females were permitted to participate in cheerleading in 1923 at the University of Minnesota, and it took a little while for other schools to follow their footsteps. “In the 1940s, collegiate men were drafted for World War II creating the opportunity for more women to make their way onto sporting event sidelines” (1) and this was the first time that women actually did something to take over.

1950’s was when cheerleading became more popular, the 60’s was when it was mainly considered a feminine sport, and the 70’s was when girls primarily cheered at public school games.

Wikipedia stated that as of 2005, 97% of modern cheerleaders were female, but cheerleading was co-ed in the collegiate level, making it a 50/50 split between males and females. Thinking about this statistic made sense to me, because whenever I had a cheerleading camp that brought in collegiate level teams to help us out, there was surprisingly more guys rather than girls.

I personally think it’s cool when a guy is on a cheerleading team, it creates diversity within the sport. The guys are always looked at differently when they are apart of the team, but they don’t care because they think the sport is fun, and they are really good at it! They don’t care what other guys think, and some even follow them, creating more of a co-ed team and making it even better.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerleading

As Wikipedia states it, “cheerleading is an activity in which the participants cheer for their team as a form of encouragement” (1) and it began in the late 18th century. The biggest thing cheerleaders are probably known for is cheering at football or basketball games (which personally, was my least favorite part about the sport).

Cheerleading originated in the United States. After the biggest cheer movie, Bring It On came out cheerleading scattered across the world in countries such as China, France, Japan and so many others.

Professional cheerleading started in the 1950’s, and they were the cheerleaders for the NFL, the Baltimore Colts. This was when cheerleading started to get bigger than before, it put on a whole new perspective for the sport. The way that the women cheering were selected was based on who their targeted market was, men.

Having professional cheerleading was what sexualized cheerleading so much. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders started in the 70’s and wore their revealing outfits, “establishing cheerleaders as ‘American icons of wholesome sex appeal'” (1).

The 1980’s was when the stunting and gymnastic sequences started to begin. Then all-star cheerleading was created by the United States All-Star Federation (USASF). To this day, the USASF is the biggest part of cheerleading, and this is the federation that hosts many cheerleading competitions, including almost all of the competitions I have competed in.

Whether you realize it or not, when you go to any type of game, you are more than likely cheering for someone or the team as a whole. Maybe it’s not even a game you go to, it can extend to you passing a test, watching someone complete a challenge, and so many other events that might happen in your life that you’re excited for. Everyone has a little cheerleader in their own body!

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerleading

One component of the routine for a cheerleading competition is tumbling, it is one of the most eye-catching parts of the routine, next to stunting. If you don’t already know, tumbling is originally part of gymnastics, and it is the act of performing different types of handsprings, and doing somersaults in the air.

The most basic type of tumbling is a somersault (forward roll, and backward roll), a handstand or a cartwheel. The most important part of these basic tumbling skills is having your whole body stay as tight as possible, squeezing your arms, legs, core and bottom. Having a tight posture will help you in the long run for when you advance to the next skill, and it just looks especially cleaner when having the correct posture.

When you are ready to become more advanced in your tumbling, you will begin to do moves such as a roundoff, front handspring and back handspring. A roundoff is just a cartwheel, but instead of just stepping into it, you will be running and land with more power, and feet together. A front handspring is simply just being in a handstand, and instead of landing the same way you went up, you will be kicking your feet behind you. A back handspring is the same thing, but you do it backwards instead.

After you have mastered the basic tumbling skills, you can add twists, and tumble without putting your hands on the ground such as a back tuck. A full is one of the most advanced tumbling skill that you can have, and it is very difficult to achieve. Check out the video below, this is a tumbler completing a roundoff back handspring full pass.

If you’re like me, you might get those “first practice jitters” every school year when your sport is back to starting up. Maybe questions will be filling throughout your head all day and you can’t focus on anything else:

How is the first day going to be?

Who is going to show up?

Who is going to be in my stunt group?

Those are just a few questions I think of throughout the day. But most importantly, what should you expect when going to the first cheerleading practice of the year? We do numerous things throughout our usual three-hour practices, but the one thing we start off doing is getting to know one another. If you don’t know your team, how are you able to work together?

What we do after we get to know each other a little bit is do jump lines. When we do those, we all get into lines and practice jumps that will soon end up in our routine. Those consist of: toe touches, pikes, and both right and left hurdler (all pictured below, including more).

After we are done with that, then comes forming stunt groups. We start with people who have previously cheered and separate them by flyer, back spot, and the bases. A quick overview of what each of those positions are if you weren’t here for my last post:

A back spot is someone who stands in the back of the stunt holding the flyers ankles, making sure she doesn’t fall and if she does, she needs to make sure that she catches the flyer. There are two bases in a stunt group, they have the responsibility of the flyer while holding onto her feet. The flyer is the one at the very top of the stunt, their responsibility is to stay very tight, when doing that, it makes it easier on the bases because she will feel much lighter.

Once our coach comes up with our stunt groups, we practice our stunts with each other. Some basic stunts that will consist of our first practice is a half, full, a liberty (lib) and maybe a tick tock (switch up) on the first day.

A half is when the bases and back spot are holding the flyer at chest-level. A full is when all three positions have their arms extended all the way up and are holding the flyer above their heads. When you do a lib, the flyer is only on one foot, where the others she is on two. There are two different variations of the lib stunt, you can do it either in a half or full, but a full is much easier surprisingly. Lastly, if some stunt groups make it through the stunts quick enough, our coach might have them do a switch up. This stunt is just like a lib, but the flyer will be switching her legs mid-air. So, she will be ending up on a different leg than she started on.

There are a bunch of different aspects of cheerleading, but one of the biggest ones is stunting, aside from tumbling. When you are stunting, there are three different positions, and usually four different people in the stunt. The three positions are: back spot, base and flyer. The different positions will be pictured below.

The flyer is the one at the very top of the stunt, their responsibility is to stay very tight, when doing that, it makes it easier for the rest of the stunt group to transition, if needed. It is critical for the flyer to learn how to hold their own weight properly prior to actually flying. The other important job the flyer has to have is the skill that they might have to pull in the air, such as an arabesque, scorpion or heel stretch. This is just an example of what a heel stretch is:

There are two bases in a stunt group, they have the responsibility of the flyer while holding onto her feet. They are also responsible for the flyers safety from the time her feet leave the ground, until they are back down. There are two different types of bases, there is a main base and the secondary base. If you look closely in the picture above, you can tell the base on the right side, has her hand on the foot along with her ankle so she is the secondary base. The main bases job is to make sure to never take your eyes off of the foot you are holding along with your hands because you will be fully holding the entire foot by yourself, or sometimes with the support of the secondary base.

A back spot is someone who stands in the back of the stunt holding the flyers ankles, making sure she doesn’t fall and if she does, she needs to make sure that she catches the flyer. While holding her ankles, the back spot needs to try to pull up as much weight as possible, to make the stunt a little less harsh on the bases. The back spot needs to be able to drive the stunt up as quick and efficiently as they can, it creates an easier stunt for the bases.

The most important part of stunting in cheerleading, is the back spots and bases need to be as close as they possibly can to each other to have a safe and stable stunt. Everything about a stunt needs to be done neatly and there needs to be a lot of focus from everyone. If there is one person that is not trying as hard as the others, the stunt will more than likely fail.

A mental block is defined as an inability to remember something or perform a mental action, in some ways it’s just like writers block. Some of my teammates, including myself, have the worst mental blacks when it comes to tumbling, it’s very common for athletes to develop a type of mental block.

For me, it all started during high school, I was at an open gym to practice my tumbling to get better for competition that was coming up soon. I was going for a back handspring and landed right on my head, and that was when and where it all started. Ever since that day, I haven’t been able to do any type of tumbling without someone standing next to me spotting.

There are so many reasons why athletes develop a mental block, and one of them is ineffective coaching. This can be from the coach being either too tough, or not tough enough. In my case, my coach was not tough enough to get me back in the habit of pulling my tumbling after it happened, she kept telling me to take it easy and that was when I just stopped being able to do any skill.

Another reason why athletes develop a mental block is because they have the fear of injuring themselves, or worse, re-injury. The biggest way to injure yourself is to have that negative mindset of possibly hurting yourself.

Lastly, there is always the person who is the perfectionist, and this one is the biggest. There is always that fear of not looking good while you are doing the tumbling pass, because you aren’t going to do the same pass the same way every time, it won’t ever work like that. The perfectionist are usually the ones who actually do things perfectly, and this is the irony with it, they are just afraid for that one time where it might not look right.

If you know me, you know how shy I can get when someone new is around me. As a cheerleader you need to be confident and open to things that you might not be comfortable with.

Every cheerleader knows that when you are doing anything in a routine you have to make facials so you can sell your performance to the judges, that is the most important thing. You can have the worst routine in the whole competition, but if it looks like you are having the time of your life, it makes the routine so much better.

Ever since I was growing up, I have had the worst social anxiety, but when you are on the mat for a competition, you can’t be scared. You have to be confident as ever, not afraid to mess up and if you do, keep going and do not look back. This has probably been the best life advice I could have gotten as a kid.

A famous quote from every coach I have ever had is:

“If you feel weird while you are doing it, that means you are doing it right”

Having that as an inspiration as me never being alone making the weirdest faces on the mat makes it so much easier to be comfortable with what I am doing. Making my weird faces in front of hundreds, and maybe thousands, of people I do not know at all helps me to get out of my comfort zone around just about anybody.

I’m not the person I was when I first started cheering, but of course I’m not because I was only nine years old. But I always wonder if I would be even more shy than I am today if I never had the confidence that cheerleading gave me.