When you say the word “cheerleading,” most people think of girls who are on the sidelines of a football game, wearing tight outfits, and yelling cheers to a crowd. They think of cheerleading as an after-school activity that doesn’t take much time or effort. But what they don’t see is what goes on behind the scenes. There’s much more to cheerleading than what most people would think; they’ve just never seen it before.

Cheerleading is an extremely dangerous sport. Cheerleading accounts for 70% of direct catastrophic injuries among female college athletes. Also, it has also been said that cheerleaders suffer more catastrophic injuries than any other high school female athletes. Cheerleaders, practically do the un-thinkable. They throw girls up in the air, they are so flexible they look like they have no spine, and they do a crazy amount of tumbling. When cheerleaders are doing their tumbling passes, the amount of force on their bones can be up to 12 times the cheerleaders body weight making it very dangerous. As a cheerleader, I see more people fall and hit the floor than any other sport. In my lifetime, I’ve seen more bruises and broken bones happen during cheerleading practice than at a competition.

Many people have different thoughts, ideas, and opinions on cheerleading. Most people believe cheerleading is not a sport, but only an activity. They believe that mostly because they’ve never done cheerleading before, or they’ve never seen what REAL cheerleaders can do. Some of the different stereotypes about cheerleaders are, that cheering has been stereotyped in movies and denigrated by classmates as unintelligent, self-absorbed, pompom waving snobs. People also associate cheering with nothing more than makeup, hairspray, popularity contests, and scrawny non-athletic girls. In many people’s opinion, cheering is something to do for an extracurricular activity that just requires showing up on Friday nights for a football game or after school for a basketball game. I can understand where people are coming from if they only see the cheerleaders that go to football or basketball games and do sidelines cheers. But there’s a whole other side to cheering: competition.

There are different “types” of cheerleading. Competition cheerleading usually lasts for about 3-4 months, which gives the girls and guys time to prep for doing their routines at competitions. Routines consist of tumbling, stunts, jumps, and dance. Routines usually last about 2 minutes 30 seconds. Competition cheerleaders compete against other teams for first, second, third place. There’s also national or grand champion placement as well, for the team that scores the highest out of everyone.

There’s football cheerleading, which is practically the same as basketball cheerleading. The cheerleaders in football cheering practice sideline cheers for the games, and practice stunts to put up during the quarters. Most cheer teams also put together a halftime routine, which usually takes up most of practice time. Halftime routines are like competition cheerleading only, shorter. Halftime routines are usually about 1 minute 30 seconds.

The last “type” of cheerleading is All-Star cheerleading, which most people have never heard of before and never seen before. In my opinion, All-Star cheerleading is the definition of an actual sport. If you’ve never seen an All-Star cheerleading competition before, then you must go. You would be blown away with the talent that these girls have. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted to be an All-Star cheerleader because they had such talent and it was the best cheerleading to watch. Finally now at sixteen years old, I am able to live my dream and be on a All-Star cheering team. All-Star cheering usually takes up about one year for a “season.” The beginning of All-Star cheer is mostly just conditioning, working on stunts, and getting stronger for competition. When competition comes around, the girls go into “fighting mode.” They are working their butt off to make their routine look like perfection. The point is to make cheerleading look easy. In All-Star cheerleading, everything is a step above the rest. You have to be great at tumbling, great at stunting, and an amazing cheerleader overall. It’s very difficult. I’ve been cheerleading for twelve years of my life and All-Star cheerleading is definitely the hardest “type” of cheerleading that I’ve done. When you go to competitions, they aren’t little tiny competitions in a high school gymnasium. No. They are in huge arenas and colisées around the entire U.S. There are huge lights, a backdrop, trophies as tall as my body, and judges. It’s much more than your average high school cheerleading competition.

Cheerleaders all around the world have been trying for years to get their “sport” to actually be considered a “sport.” In this society, cheerleading has been looked down upon as something girls do for “fun,” but most cheerleaders do it because it’s their way of living. Currently, twenty nine state high school athletic associations recognize cheering as a sport. And being classified as a sport by the NCAA or NFHS would provide cheering teams with same benefits and protections as other school sports. Some schools don’t allow their cheer team to be able to see the athletic trainer or use medical equipment. Simply because cheering is not considered a “sport.”

In conclusion, I truly believe that cheerleading should be classified as a sport in all states. Cheerleaders work just as hard as other athletes and I do believe that they should be treated as one. I recognize that some people do not have the same opinion as I do, but many people do not fully understand cheerleading because they may not have been fully exposed to it. Those people that don’t think cheerleading is a sport probably don’t have any knowledge about cheering or they’ve never actually seen competition cheerleading.

Erica Davis