4 minute read
Is cheerleading a real sport? ...................................................................................................................................................
JV cheer after their performance in the rally
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.
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.
JV cheer in their 2nd home game
As a result, I have been able to create a stronger bond with the girls in JV. I feel like I can trust them because each and everyone of them have been able to create a community of love and respect for one another.
Cheerleading coach Linda Carrier said that what makes a cheerleading team successful is, “Team work, partnerships, and bonding”.
Showing the importance of Linda Carrier’s priorities for the team, leads to the time we were trying to do a stunt and the bases, the people who hold the top girl in the air, were not lifting the flyer up at the same time. The flyer ended up falling on me, because as a back spot I spot the girl from the back. The back spot’s responsibility is making sure the flyer never falls on the ground. This is tricky because sometimes you’re not strong enough to keep the girl from falling, or you’re so distracted by putting the girl in the air that you forget to actually catch her.
Carrier stated, “Getting the team to the point where they understand that they’re responsible for everybody’s else’s success so that their actions impact everybody else”.
Next, not only is it hard to trust your teammates but also learning dances in a short amount of time is very stressful. For example,
when we do the rallies where we perform in front of the whole school and we show them the new stunts and dances we put together as a team. To learn the dances we have an estimate of two practices in one weeks to put the dance together.
JV throughout the August and September games have to stand in 90 degree weather in the hot sun for four hours making sure the football guys know that they are being cheered on. But me and my team still manage to enjoy doing what we do because it allows us to make a deeper connection with one another.
When me and my JV team first joined cheerleading we were confused on what to do. But we started to get better each and every day with our practices. When we did our first performance we were nervous we were gonna mess up. But we did better than we expected.
Overall, cheerleading is a more serious sport than football because imagine you putting a girl in the air and her falling on your head, or pulling your jewelry trying to not touch the floor, or sometimes getting hit in the face.
