Cheerleading: Is it a sport?

Do you consider cheerleading a sport?

This is one of the most controversial questions in the sports world. Many South students had different views on this topic. 

“Yes, because in high school it’s considered a sport, and like you have to practice for it. It also has physical work,” said Jai Patel, sophomore. 

Cheerleading has lots of physical work in it, such as tumbling. Many students don’t consider it as hard as traditional sports such as football and soccer.

“You don’t do anything; you don’t run, you don’t really work, all you do is jump up and down and do a cartwheel,” said Makailee McGhee, sophomore.

Due to the stereotypes surrounding Cheerleading, many people believe that Cheerleading is a simpler sport compared to other traditional sports.

There are a lot of different qualities that make Cheerleading a sport and some that don’t make it count as a sport.

“I have seen them running laps around the school a lot and the girls that have to hold the people up (the bases) have to have core strength and arm strength to pick up the person, and the flyer has to have a lot of core strength,” said Katy Sheehan, freshman.

Cheerleading consists of a base, a person that holds up a flyer, and a flyer, who does all the tumbling during the routine in the air. This requires a lot of practice, although other students may think differently.

“They don’t have a lot of contact and there is no ball, like in baseball and soccer, you have something you’re supposed to kick or hit and there is a point to it, but in Cheer all you are doing is cheering,” said Olivia Hershberger, freshman.

In many sports it usually involves some time of ball and a goal but Cheerleading is a little different from the traditional sports. It mostly involves a lot of tumbling and cheering on South’s school teams.

There are a lot of different qualities that make cheerleading different than other sports.

“It’s a performance thing, like you perform in Cheerleading. It’s more like an art form,” said Patel.

Cheerleading also lacks some qualities other more traditional sports have.

“Other sports have contact and aggressiveness and they don’t have a ball,” said Hershberger.

Cheer practices are a little bit different from other sport practices. It usually consists of a lot of tumbling and balance practice.

“Depends on what we are doing, there’s a lot of running and conditioning and balance work,” said Royelle Gant a sophomore who is also in the Cheerleading team at South.

There are lots of ways Cheerleading can be changed to make it seem more like the other more traditional sports.

“If they went to competitions and like announced so people can come and support them,” said Lily Gant, a freshman who doesn’t know about the competitions the cheer team goes on.

Many students don’t consider cheerleading a support of many reasons, although they are all mostly based on the stereotypes surrounding cheerleaders.

“The biggest thing is that it’s not a game and there’s a lot of stereotypes associated with cheerleading that like its really easy and that it’s not a lot of work and they just have to look pretty and be skinny,” said Sheehan.

Students believe that there are some changes that can be make cheerleading seem more like a traditional sport.

“They can do a lot more tricks like gymnastics does, because like competitive gymnastics is like a sport or if they add some kind of goal to it,” said Hershberger.

Although there are different views on if cheerleading is considered a sport they have a big part in our traditional sports games by going out and supporting the players during a game.