<p>my daughter played volleyball in middle but not high school
it is at the same time as soccer and I told her only one team at a time ( then she joined swimming- it worked out though)
no skimpy shorts
I can see the skimpy shorts for track- but not for volleyball- unless you are playing beach volleyball
<a href=“http://www.garfieldvolleyball.com/[/url]”>http://www.garfieldvolleyball.com/</a></p>
<p>I would agree that with many choices for young women to be involved in sports, that those who choose to be cheerleaders have different objectives than those who consider themselves foremost athletes.
It really just depends on what you want to get out of your EC I guess, but I am happy mine is interested in sports & didn’t want to attend a school where girls have clearly pre-defined roles to fill.</p>
<p>The thing is that with the overwhelming popularity of competitive cheerleading, the trend is for school squads to be filled with competitive cheerleaders. My d started competitive cheer in junior high, participated in school and competitive in high school and gave up both due to injury her senior year. Her entire school squad were also members of competitive squads coached at a private gyms by professional coaches.</p>
<p>Both school and competitive squads have different purposes yes…but both are filled with dedicated athletes because, these days, you can’t make a school squad without competitive athletic skills. The purpose of both types of squads shouldn’t be diminished either. My daughther participated in cheer at her school because she considered it HER sport and it fulfilled her desire to be a leader. She participated in competitive cheer because it was her chance to compete and win. </p>
<p>And given that both school and competitive cheerleading is open to males and females, I really don’t look at being something that relegates females to a pre-defined role. I guess a female can take it there if she wants…but I definitely feel girls don’t get relegated unless they are willing to get relegated. The experience is what each girl makes of it.</p>
<p>omg Marian! My d competed in the Alamodome filled to the top with fans! (And the Dallas Convention Center and the Astroarena, etc…) At the time, I was a little disdainful of the whole competitive thing; but I now look back and realize the guts it took to walk out on the floor in front of tens of thousands of people and perform…and what a positive experience that can be with respect to self confidence. I could have never done it at the tender age of 14…I know that.</p>
<p>^Marian - It definitely got old for the family…hauling to practices that were minimum 10 hours a week with the team/several hours a week of private coaching; constant out of town travel, etc. And after literally days spent in total darkness in a venue listening to ‘cheer’ music with all the sound effects (whips, whistles, ‘shots’), I thought I’d go mad. Every year, I swore it was our last… But now, in retrospect, I’d do it all over again, if it were something my d really wanted, just for the confidence-building aspect of it.</p>
<p>Who mentioned the marching band with the skimpy outfit poms girls? We totally have those! Well, they’re dance and not poms, but yeah. They are HOT. Judges hate us…the crowds love us. Also, I don’t mind it either. Why is everyone forgetting the gay girls? ;).</p>
<p>“Oh, it would be SO weird cheering for girls.”</p>
<p>Yes. That’s what all the cheerleaders say. But they have no problem making out with chicks at parties…ahaha.</p>
<p>That said, the concept of cheerleading /can/ lead to sexism. I have to say our cheerleaders look equally unenthusiastic when cheering for both boys’ and girls’ sports. I don’t blame them, though. They really don’t get any respect, even from the boys…I think they really can be a great asset to school spirit if managed properly and if teams respect the hardwork they put in for them. Alas, this is usually not the case, and so it degenerates into “Well, at least my boyfriend will appreciate I’m here”. You can’t blame all of that on the cheerleaders and the concept of cheering or the administration…the student body and general apathy for every sport an individual does not participate in himself/herself is the culprit.</p>
<p>ldmom06. this weekend, our cheerleaders are competing in an event in Galveston. A bunch of sr football moms are heading down there and renting a beachhouse next to the girl mom’s house. We are planning on cheering our hineys off for those kids! There is a close bond between all the moms and we all, as a community, support each other’s kids. We didn’t invite the boys for two reasons - 1. The girls need to focus on their competition and 2. the moms need to focus on their fun weekend! ;)</p>
<p>Jumping in kind of late here but this is a good topic! I haven’t done cheerleading yet because the schedule just never meshed with the gymnastics commitment but I would have loved to. I know some people have an issue with the uniforms, the hair, but you know, it’s a performance sport. Competitive dance has the same thing. Competitive gymnastics is pretty darn close. Is the hair and the sparkliness of the outfit part of the competition? Not exactly. It’s hard to explain it. It’s just like tradition or something. I have no problem with it but I think to “outsiders” this can come off creepy because of the way the community moves around these sports cult like and they don’t have mass appeal (i.e. not so televised). </p>
<p>Personally I think football is extremely weird and I have never watched a whole game. So…it’s all in the perception lol. There’s no real reason cheerleading is any more or less than males slamming into each other and refs making seemingly random calls. There’s no completely objective sport and these sports tend to have appeal along gender lines. I am fully in support of any girl who wants to do football or any boy who wants to cheer, that’s great. But I don’t think cheerleading should be condemned because it’s a “girl” sport and teaches girls this or that. Then so does gymnastics, and so does dance. But it really doesn’t. It teaches them to be part of a team, to present confidently, to have fitness skills. </p>
<p>Cheer tumbling is getting harder since spring floors are becoming the norm in club competitions (as of yet it doesn’t quite rival the gymnastics tumbling you see on TV But the best cheer tumblers have usually done gymnastics or tumbling for some time and are at a pretty high level of tumbling)</p>
<p>“But I don’t think cheerleading should be condemned because it’s a “girl” sport and teaches girls this or that. Then so does gymnastics, and so does dance. But it really doesn’t.”</p>
<p>I agree that the sport doesn’t necessarily teach girls bad lessons. But some coaches, schools, and gyms sure do. In gymnastics and dance, too.</p>
<p>And schools, and other sports, and people on the street too. I just don’t see where people think girls coming out of gymnastics, dance, and cheerleading are as a whole any more messed up than anyone. Yes - there are extreme cases. But parents need to watch for these things anywhere. Just rejecting cheerleading as the villain won’t save your daughter. Far from it. Being in an organized activity (positively) like gymnastics or cheerleading can lead to a healthier life and stronger work ethic. </p>
<p>The “problems” we’re alluding to here go much deeper than cheerleading or gymnastics. They aren’t monocausal. It just doesn’t stand to reason. If you could pinpoint it to those causes and say it was just cheerleading, if she hadn’t done that, then you would observe the exact same behavior (we’ll go with eating disorder to make the point) over everyone who worked in the same group with the same people, etc. And for gymnastics certainly, that’s just not true. The whole theory of genetics plus environment and then some comes up. Yes, something at cheerleading MAY be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for an individual. But there’s little to say in an alternate universe where the individual doesn’t cheer, things wouldn’t end up the same. The trigger might be different, but if everything else is in line for the trigger to go off, it might not be as simple as it seems. The key here is that people don’t need to be afraid of these sports if they apply reasonable caution and make sure everything else is in line.</p>
<p>It shouldnt be compulsory. Football gets more attention than basketball because its a bigger draw, so why shouldnt guys basketball get more attention than girls basketball since its a bigger draw? What’s next, parent’s of chess team members demanding equal time?</p>
<p>Football gets more attention than basketball because its a bigger draw, so why shouldnt guys basketball get more attention than girls basketball since its a bigger draw?
At my daughters school- womens basketball is coached by the 2nd ever female Harlem Globetrotter- Joyce Walker
The Lady Bulldogs have a(much) bigger draw than the boys actually for that particular sport.</p>
<p>However my daughter is only 5’6" ( and 115lbs) she prefers rugby, basketball is apparently too warm and dry
[url=<a href=“http://www.ninjapirate.com/rugby.html]How”>http://www.ninjapirate.com/rugby.html]How</a> to play Rugby<a href=“warning-%20Adult%20language-but%20not%20any%20worse%20than%20you’ve%20heard%20at%20a%20little%20League%20game”>/url</a></p>
<p>Idmom, Yes, it was Cheer Power. Let’s just say that they had a great time ! I think staying at the hotel with all the other squads was the highlight of the weekend.</p>
<p>The varsity squad finished much worse than the JV squad and they were pretty disappointed. Apparently, right before they were supposed to compete, one of the flyers, while practicing a tumbling run, wiped out and landed hard on her shoulder, so there was some scrambling backstage to try to put somebody else in her position. I don’t think it worked out very well. Luckily, she was ok, only a little bruised (physically and emotionally).</p>
<p>For us moms, the whole weekend was a hoot! We are going to try to plan another weekend together before all the craziness of graduation and prom. We’ll call it a “mental health” weekend!</p>
<p>oh my gosh ag! I remember so many times our girls having to do last minute substitutions…it’s so hard to maintain composure in those circumstances. It’s a good learning experience, but it’s tough! I’m glad to hear your flyer is okay.</p>
<p>I have to say…one thing I enjoyed about the years of competitions was the camaradarie among the parents and the girls. One year at NCAs, we arrived in Dallas with an ice storm on our heels. The power went out at our high rise hotel and we had no way to get the girls ready to compete. Hot water, elevators, everything was down. The parents all volunteered to load the teams into SUVs and after creeping along icy roads, we arrived at the Dallas Convention Center where we moved our entire operations into the bathrooms there. Four of our ten teams were competing there that day…a total of about 100 girls. So it took a cooperative effort on everyone’s part to make this thing happen. (NCAs is the big show and it was our new gym’s first time there… so there was no way those girls were not going to compete.) The girls did very well…no jackets, but they all finaled which was their goal for that first appearnce. They ‘made their presence known’ among the big powerhouse gyms. </p>
<p>I’m glad to be through with it…but definitely have some positive, fond memories.</p>
<p>Being a mom of boys, the weekend was an eye opening thing for me. It is neat the camaraderie that was felt among the girls (and moms). I wish my boys had more opportunity to do things like that! </p>
<p>I wish our girls had “made their presence known”, but alas, I don’t think anyone is going to be looking over their shoulder for our squad :).</p>
<p>It is such a bittersweet time right now, being glad that some things are done, but knowing that we will miss the wonderful times we had.</p>
<p>“I just don’t see where people think girls coming out of gymnastics, dance, and cheerleading are as a whole any more messed up than anyone.”</p>
<p>Well, here’s an example. There’s a thread on the Parents board right now where a lot of parents are advising one another on choosing a summer dance program that won’t lead their daughters to develop anorexia, a chronic illness with the highest fatality rate of any mental illness. All the parents seem to agree that it’s smart to take this into consideration when choosing a program.</p>
<p>When there’s a comparable thread about preventing a potentially fatal illness from infecting your child at band camp, debate camp, or choir camp, I’ll agree that dance and related activities should not be singled out for special attention. Until then, parents are wise to use particular caution when children are involved in these activities. The anorexia rate among advanced students at the ballet school where my sisters and I trained was in the high single digits at LEAST. If the rate of meningitis infection were that high, people would demand that the school be shut down…and meningitis is a lot easier to treat than anorexia.</p>
<p>So I’ll say it again: the sports themselves don’t teach bad lessons, but pockets of a poisonous culture exist within them, and parents need to be on the lookout and make sure that their kids who participate aren’t being endangered. I’d say the same about sons involved in football or weight-lifting or distance cycling and the many gyms and trainers that encourage kids to dope.</p>
<p>^Well…I was going to post a link to ldgirl’s squad pics of the icestorm/competition for ag54 to see…but maybe I won’t. The skimpy uniforms with bare tummies and sparkly bloomers will undoubtedly reinforce your argument hanna…lol!</p>
<p>Actually, I do agree with you about this being a problem in certain girls’ sports, but I don’t think it’s confined to just these areas. Unfortunately, we have Top Model, Project Runway, Ana and AnaMia websites, fashion magazines all reinforcing the idea among all girls that extreme body proportions are appropriate and desirable. And it IS a serious problem.</p>
<p>In fact, in looking at my d’s team pics, it is quite refreshing to see we have all body types represented in those photos. Cheering isn’t just for skinnybones. (But while I understand the need for stage makeup, I still can’t stand the skimpy outfits. That will always be a bone of contention for me.)</p>
