You practice 5-7 days a week. Blood, sweat, and tears. You get a foot to the face. You get an elbow to the face. You get hit in the nose and have a bloody nose. You have a body coming at you full force with no stopping. Sounds pretty intense, right? What sport came to your head as you read those first few sentences? Most of you probably said football but I’m talking about the one sport people don’t believe is a sport, competitive cheerleading.
“On July 20, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted in favor of granting full recognition to the International Cheer Union (ICU) and cheerleading, making one of America’s oldest examples of teamwork eligible to apply to be included on the Olympics program” (Peyser, 2021). This made a big debate between people on social media about how much they disapproved this acknowledgment. Do you have a right to disagree? Absolutely, but why not let people feel the way they feel without arguing one way or another? If you were so passionate about what you feel is a sport or is acknowledged as a sport and someone said “no it isn’t” wouldn’t you be offended too?
Why do you feel that cheerleading is not a sport? Because you base it off of movies like “Bring it On”? What if everyone made parodies of your sport and that’s all people based your sport off of but you know that it isn’t factual? You would feel passionate about debating it as well. Are there different types of cheerleading that maybe people do not define as a sport? Most definitely! For most people who believe cheerleading is a sport, to means the cheerleader is stunting, tumbling, doing a 2 minute and 30 second routine, not sideline cheerleading. If we became more open minded about how people felt about something then these debates wouldn’t be infuriating to some. How do you know that cheerleading may be harder or easier than any other sport? For someone who owns a competitive cheerleading gym and had football players do the conditioning that cheerleaders do, I can tell you that some boys can’t hang! So before you decide to bash on someones passion of cheerleading, maybe take a step on the mat and give it a shot to see how “easy” it is.
Peyser, M. (2021, August 7). What the IOC’s recognition of cheerleading means for the sport and its athletes. WHAT THE IOC’S RECOGNITION OF CHEERLEADING MEANS FOR THE SPORT AND ITS ATHLETES. https://www.foxsports.com/stories/olympics/international-olympic-committee-recognizes-cheerleading-international-cheer-union-sport.
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