What’s a sport? It’s an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition. Football, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and more all fall into this category commonly. But why not cheerleading? Is it not a sport? Cheer is a sport because it’s a physical activity, it’s difficult, and there are competitions.
Cheer is a physical activity because it requires moving around. If you are saying cheer doesn’t consist of physical activity than you are insane. In cheer there are jumps, tumbling, dance, stunts, motions, and more. Jumping is in basketball and basketball is physical. Tumbling is in gymnastics and gymnastics is physical. Ballet, jazz, and tap are all dance, and dance is physical. In stunts cheerleader either lift people or fly. Motions are obviously physical because of the name; motion is about moving and moving is physical. Cheerleading is a physical activity.
Did you know that cheer is one of the most dangerous hobbies/sports? Why would it be considered dangerous if it was easy? It wouldn’t be. Cheer combines physical activity with the ability to count and follow music. Motions have to be sharp, jumps have to be high and clean, and the dance has to be fun, creative and still clean. No matter what position you are in stunts it really difficult. A base has to have extremely strong legs to be lifting a person into the air. How is that easy? Flyers have to be able to be flexible and have good balance. Try doing a heel stretch, scorpion, bow and arrow, scale, arabesque, or liberty. It’s not easy on the ground so it sure isn’t easy in the air. Back spot have to have strong arms because they help lift flyers. Backs have to guide and keep track so the flyers are safe. Tumbling is super hard because it takes a long time to learn. It takes most people about one year to learn a backhand spring and that is just level 2 tumbling. If you say cheerleading isn’t a sport than you are saying gymnastics isn’t either.
There are obviously competitions in cheer. If you haven’t been to one than watch “Bring it On.” Cheerleaders are competitive, always competing to see who the best is. We train hard hours for a two minute routine for a reason, because we want to show our stuff and be the best. Don’t even deny that there are no competitions because it’s an obvious and proven fact.
Overall, cheer has all of the qualities of a real sport. Cheer is a lot of work and it should be considered a sport to everyone. If you cheer and you are tired of people saying it’s not a sport just spread around the article.