Why Cheerleading is A Sport

Read below about my personal story of being a cheerleader and why it is a sport.

I did all-star competitive cheerleading for 8 years starting from fifth grade until my senior year of high school. During these eight years, I cheered at 3 gyms including Cheer Dynamics Rockets in Fayetteville, NC, National Stars in Augusta, GA, and Maryland Twisters Virginia in Sterling, VA. Because of these years, I have experienced the good and bad times that only cheerleaders can understand.

Cheerleading has been most of my life, since my usually weekly schedule was going to school, going to cheer practice, studying when I had time, and occasionally traveling for competitions. Without cheerleading, I would have not meet some of the best people in my life. These people helped me through some of the most difficult parts of my life including moving to a different state. For example, the owner of the gym that I went to in Georgia was very supportive for me and allowed me to practice with two teams in the summer even though she knew I was not staying. Also, because of cheerleading I had to opportunity to compete at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World and placed 13th place at the 2019 Summit after performing two zero deduction routines and moving on from the Wildcard round. While this experience was great, probably the highlight of my cheer career would be winning the 2018 One Cheer and Dance Finals and receiving the bid not really expecting it.

One thing that is bad for cheerleaders everywhere are the stereotypes that most people have. Movies and tv shows portray cheerleaders as being dumb, blonde, skinny, and only concern about popularity or having the 'perfect life'. This portrayal is what most people think cheeleading is. And I have been stereotyped by my association. An example is that I was meeting a ROTC representative, since I was thinking about doing ROTC in college, but after telling him about the types of classes I was taking and I did allstar cheerleading, he said "woah, those two things you often do not see together." And I didn't know if I should take that offensively or as a compliment. S0 from personal experience, I can tell you that this general belief stereotype is so wrong. Since others and myself take hard classes including APs, Honors, etc. Also, cheerleaders sometimes eat unhealthy not caring about the calories or whatever may happen.

Also, people believe that cheerleading is mostly about shaking pompoms and yelling chants for their team. But allstar cheerleading is more than that. It includes stunting, jumping, tumbling, and dancing. And what people don't know is that cheerleading is so precious that if one mistake happens, someone could get seriously injured or there's so chance of recovery as would be in a different sports. Thus, cheerleading was named the most dangerous sport for women in 2014(see the article below) and now is in the top 5 for dangerous sports. I would personally know this danger because every practice and competition I would get bruises, cut, pain, or soreness in the some weird places on the body and I have known people to break wrist, dislocate their elbow, or get a concussion having falling in a stunt super high off the ground.

Thus cheerleading has became one of the most important things in my life and it feels weird not going to practices every week and making memories with my teammates.

Article for injuries in cheerleading

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10310848/Cheerleading-most-dangerous-sport-for-US-women.html