<p>I certainly don’t think of cheerleading as a traditional sport. I guess because back in my day cheerleading teams didn’t compete against each other, but today they do. If you think about it, there is no intrinsic difference between chearleading competitions and any other sport that is decided by judges such as figure skating or gymnastics. In fact cheerleading strikes me as a type of group gymnastics.</p>
<p>After thinking about it, I would say that competitive cheerleading is materially more difficult and dangerous than volleyball. Competitive cheerleading requires significant organization, structure, fitness and strength. It is much more difficult to throw someone into the air and to balance someone on your shoulders than it is to hit a ball over a net. Missing your mark in volleyball means the other team scores a point. Missing your mark in competitive cheerleading means you drop a teammate and make a trip to the emergency room.</p>
<p>^ gymnastics is a college varsity sport and they have figured out how to deal with only having one competative season a year (and my guess is the gymnasts keep going just for clubs or other non-school related teams) … I would think something similar to gymnastics would work for cheer. My guess is the big sticking point would be varsity cheer teams probably could not also cheer at men’s bball and football games to be considered a varsity sport (where it might be considered using women’s varisity slots to support the men’s bball and football programs)</p>
<p>My understanding is that there are two different cheer squads - the ones who cheer at games and the NCAA team. Two of our seniors signed with Baylor for the new NCAA squad.</p>
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<p>I have very mixed feelings on this. I have a son & a daughter so have perspective on both.</p>
<p>I have a son who played football, basketball, & ran track from the time he was 10 until he graduated this last May. 2-a-day football practices in August with a heat index over 100. Weightlifting at 6:30 am 3 days a week all summer. Monday night scrimmages. THEN the season starts. Practice EVERY day after school until at least 6:00. All according to MSHAA rules. We lost 5 seniors this past season to injuries. </p>
<p>I also have a daughter that is a cheerleader in Junior High School. She has a coach. They attended camp in June and she has practice every Thursday at 7:00 am until 11:00 for the summer. They do pyramids, lifts, and stunts like basket tosses, all with proper instruction. They run so many laps in the gym each time, stretches, etc. She has very firm leg muscles. The high school squad practices once a week for the summer, then when school starts, they practice 3 mornings a week before school. Our cheerleaders cheer for football, and boys & girls basketball. The cheer squads ALSO have to follow MSHAA guidelines. (MSHAA is Missouri State HighSchool Athletics Association).</p>
<p>Daughter has also done gymnastics briefly and years of dance lessons. She is also an awesome basketball player. 
(Had to throw that in)</p>
<p>Cheerleading is NOT basketweaving. However, I know she does NOT practice anywhere to the extent my son did. I think the 2 sports are just totally different. It would be like comparing football to tennis. Or Hockey to badmitton. I just think they are a different KIND of sport.</p>
<p>I consider anything where you get extensive exercise and have a coach or teacher (like dance) a sport. It’s getting you off the couch and doing something active. I do know team sport athletes don’t consider cheering a sport, unless they’ve done that too. (At least here anyway). Usually, team sports like volleyball, have more people involved than a cheer squad. Our cheer squads have 10 at the most. (I realize competitive cheer squads are bigger). I would have thought under the circumstances, that the volleyball team would have been suffecient to meet their criteria.</p>
<p>I don’t think one has to denigrate one sport in order to make a case that another activity should also qualify as a sport.</p>
<p>Personally, cheerleading as it is practiced today certainly appears to be a sport to me. I’m glad my kids never did it; I’d be a nervous wreck.</p>
<p>I don’t know enough about titles to really comment, but to me, cheerleading is a fitness activity, not a sport. It’s like the difference between running and track; one gives you a great workout and is no less in terms of fitness, but the other actually involves competition. Maybe some schools have competitive teams who do competitions with other schools or within their own school, but that’s far from describing all cheerleading teams.</p>
<p>Granted, I come from a school where the biggest workout the cheerleaders get is clapping their hands and screaming. I don’t even think a single one of them could have run a mile within 20 minutes.</p>
<p>I thought cheerleading was NOT a sport–in that it doesn’t meet the regular competition types of guidelines…
meaning its not that they have weekly competitions just for the sake of cheering–
the competitions are after the fact–the cheering is part of the entertainment factor of being on the sidelines to men’s sports.</p>
<p>Also–this is about the judgement and Title IX…
but hey
–if schools and girls want to fight this and say cheering is a sport–
that would free up money for the boys–
However --that isn’t going to happen.</p>
<p>Our hs cheerleaders routinely win their events–not downing them at all–
its just that on a fitness level–they do not have the muscular nor aerobic fitness…of athetes ins sports
Can they do a pike or flip–yes…</p>
<p>I guess the point of the judge’s decision is that you can’t just *say *it’s a sport–you have to actually treat it as a sport for it to count for Title IX. I think that’s pretty reasonable.</p>
<p>As far as physical demands, would anybody deny that bowling or golf are sports?</p>
<p>I do wonder about the dividing line between a sport and an art, though–would competitive ballet be a sport? (I sometimes wonder this about figure skating.)</p>
<p>IMO, any activity where the winner is determined based entirely on the personal opinions of non-participants is not a true sport.</p>
<p>So, while figure skaters, divers, gymnasts, synchronized swimmers, dancers, etc, may in fact be incredible athletes, what they do is not “sports”, at best they are “competitions”.</p>
<p>As for bowling and golfing - for me, a sport has to involve physical activity to the extent that reaching the top (professional level) of your sport requires dedicated training and is likely beyond the reach of most ordinary people - that is, the participants must be “athletes”. While golf and bowling may require extreme hand-eye-body coordination, the fact that people like John Daly and Craig Stadler can succeed at the professional level…</p>
<p>Remember this is the woman’s volleyball team talking about the merits of their case against the woman’s cheerleading team in one college. One team felt that the college was bending rules to eliminate them and instead support another team that did not merit the support based on the law.</p>
<p>The issue is not if “cheerleading” is a sport, but is “cheerleading as practiced in Quinnipiac a sport under Tile IX”. I think that the judge ruled on the second question not the first one. If you do not agree with definition of a sport under Title IX, that is a different question or if you disagree with the constitutionality of the law, you have an appeal process.</p>
<p>^
I think of bowling or golf as a Game–not a sport.</p>
<p>Figure skating–sport perhaps</p>
<p>Ballet–very much an art-- and has huge athletic demands and is not a sport</p>
<p>Good point made here about
sport
vs art
vs competitveness of an activity…</p>
<p>Would people consider hunting or riflery a “sport” or a competitve event?</p>
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<p>Gymnastics really doesn’t have much of an “offseason.” Those girls all practice yearround whether in the college gym or in a private facility. Their competition season runs from the beginning of January until the middle of April I believe. Their official practices start around the first week or two of September and they are allowed to continue practicing I think until the end of the school year.</p>
<p>Checkersmidwest, our HS cheerleaders practice about 2 hours a day, so 10 hours a week (it is a double blocked class as is football and the practices are basically the same length as football practices.) After football season, the football players condition and the cheerleaders start their competition season. D’s all star team practices 4-5 hours a week, more as competitions approach. It’s a pretty laid back gym (which D wanted after years in gymnastics). The most competitive cheer gyms in our area keep a schedule like the gymnastics gyms - maybe 15 hours or more a week.</p>
<p>I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it (as would the girls) if the high school had two cheer squads - a sprit squad to cheer at the games and a competitive squad. The cheerleaders often look so bored at the games - they’d rather be competing, not standing at the sidelines.</p>
<p>this is like declaring ketchup a vegetable for school meals purposes. it is simply clarifying a technicality, not rendering judgment on athletic merit–something which a court of law is not qualified to do.</p>
<p>The irony is that Title IX was created to protect the participation rights of females in an historically male-centered genre of activity. There is probably more participation interest by female HS and college students in competitive cheerleading than in any other competitive sports, other than basketball and softball.</p>
<p>I think Hunt hit it on the nose. Something is not a sport just because someone delcares an athletic activty to be one. All “sports” are regulated, either by the NCAA, the NAIA, or the state high school athletic association. Activities that do not fit within those guidelines, for better or for worse, are not sports. </p>
<p>Personally, I like the elements of the current definition - athletic and primarily competative. Lots of activities require athleticism. Lots of activities are primarily competative. But sports must be both. As you can see, there’s lot of opinion about what should or should not be sport. The definition gives guidelines that someone, like a judge, can follow. NCAA school athletic departments notoriously shove money into the men’s programs. Title IX tries to keep them honest. I’m glad they have some fairly straightforward guidelines.</p>
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Yet that’s your daughter’s school. At mine, the cheerleaders have practices EVERYDAY from 4-6. Over the summer they have practices 4 times a day and go to the weight room every single day for an hour. They run 2 miles a day, do jumps for 30 minutes straight (yet for camps they do jumps for 2 hours), etc… I did cheer for a year and I didn’t enjoy it because I had NO time at all. I must agree, though, that cheerleaders are air-headed. But I’m guessing that because they spend all of their time at cheer and none for homework.</p>
<p>EDIT: Also, my school’s team does not have an off season, either. They start May, practice all summer, then have football season, then basketball season, then competition season, THEN it ends in March. They have a month of break because in April they go back for conditioning and tryouts.</p>
<p>I want to support what an earlier poster said. Of course, competitive cheer is a sport, and this ruling will be great for it. The ruling sets out a clear set of criteria for what you need to count towards a college’s Title IX requirement – and at the moment cheer in Connecticut didn’t meet the standard. (Which was part of the point, I suspect: Quinnipiac was trying to save money by shifting its Title IX dollars to a cheaper sport.) But it’s not that cheer CAN’T meet that standard. The cheer organizers just have to organize a little more, and not sell themselves cheaply to the ADs of the world. But what will come out of this is a much more professional and rigorously defined structure for coaching and competing in cheer.</p>
<p><<there is=“” probably=“” more=“” participation=“” interest=“” by=“” female=“” hs=“” and=“” college=“” students=“” in=“” competitive=“” cheerleading=“” than=“” any=“” other=“” sports,=“” basketball=“” softball=“”>></there></p>
<p>Perhaps this is true in high schools in some areas of the country, but not in my neck of the woods.</p>