The Sport That Helped Me

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