JV cheer after their performance in the rally
Is cheerleading a real sport? BY MARICELA CRUZ Staff Reporter As a senior in my first year of cheer, it makes me frustrated to think that high schoolers say that cheerleading is not a real sport, especially when we put our all into making sure people like our routines and get hyped up. When we do our stunts our arms, legs, and backs end up sore the next day. Senior Gabby Ake who is a captain in the varsity cheer team stated, “It is a sport in the sense that we do hard labor and have to have a positive attitude even if the team is losing. We do routines that are really hard that other people wouldn’t be able to learn”. Cheerleading requires a lot of physical contact which can result in very serious injuries, depending on trust between the teammates and yourself.
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According to Geisinger, a Pennsylvania health care provider, “another recent study found that cheerleading is the most dangerous sport for females because of the high risk for concussions and “catastrophic” injuries, which are classified as injuries that result in long-term medical conditions, permanent disabilities or a shorter lifespan. As a result, more than 30,000 cheerleaders go to the hospital for cheerleading-related injuries every year.” This article, titled “Jump, Stunt And Tumble: The Dangers Of Cheerleading,” is basically stating how cheerleading can lead to very serious injuries more than any other sport ever known. Cheerleading causes 30,000 people to go to the hospital every year that not only affects the person injured but also the parents because those injuries can cause
them to not make it out alive. If you don’t trust yourself or your teammates there is no way you can pull off the stunts that require a lot of strength. Your flyer,the person that is being lifted up in the air, is not going to trust that you will have the ability to catch her. Along with that, cheer is not all about thinking about yourself but thinking about everyone as a whole. Every voice and idea matters in cheer because then we would not be able to create all the amazing dances that we design. One person’s mistake can impact everyone else in the team. For example, there’s times where me and my teammates don’t show up to practice because of life reasons and that causes the team to not be able to practice fully or do stunts because every person’s position in the team is very important.
