<p>As a parent, I do admit that as much as I admire the gymnastic skills of some cheer squads, I’d really worry if it was my kid getting tossed in the air hoping the guy catching her didn’t miss. Hardwood and even turf aren’t that forgiving. At the same time, it’s sad to see fewer opportunities for those kids who excel at the sport.</p>
<p>That’s complete crap. I don’t think cheerleading is a sport, personally, but to demote them to some kind of large pep squad is crap. Cheerleaders work really hard at what they do and they deserve the same kind of respect that any “athlete” at a college can get. These guys and girls work really hard to perfect their routines so that they can get fans into games and to provide entertainment, not to hand out buttons and say “Go team!”</p>
<p>I do believe cheerleading is a sport, and a hard one at that. They condition and practice all the time to be able to do the things they do, and for what? To hand people buttons with “go huskies” on them, apparently.</p>
<p>Their reason for doing it is absolutely ■■■■■■■■. They want to make the program more “accessible” to people that don’t have gymnastic ability. If they want to form a “spirit squad” for those people and also have a competitive cheer team (whether or not it’s a sport is irrelevant) then great, do that. This was stupid though.</p>
<p>Cheerleading’s dangerous? And football isn’t?</p>
<p>People get excluded from cheerleading so it needs to be less athletic? Well why not take the athletics out of football, basketball, etc? I mean, it’d make it so much more “accessible” to the nonathletic crowd. I vote for flag football teams at colleges in which all players move at a brisk walk and must toss the ball. </p>
<p>Why not have both an athletic cheerleading squad and a spirit squad? I’m personally more interested in the gymnastics of cheerleading than the pom pom waving raa raa crap.</p>
<p>The issue that the administration had was that cheerleading was a student organization (which are supposed to be open to everybody, supposedly) and not part of the school’s athletic program.</p>
<p>Still, the way the university went about the changes was unfair and underhanded. It notified them before the summer that it would be implementing some changes in the cheerleading program; it did not detail the nature or magnitude of the changes. Then, no more than 1-2 months before the semester’s start, it informed everybody that it was disbanding the cheerleading team and replacing it with a “spirit squad”. I still don’t understand why they didn’t go with other solutions, like you mentioned Lethal Fairy. There could have been both a spirit squad and cheerleading (though budget problems might have nixed that idea), or there could have been different levels of cheerleading (club, intramural, etc.).</p>
<p>I’m not exactly a fan of cheerleading or UConn cheerleading, but injustice is the same regardless of the target.</p>
<p>I recently read something about cheer injuries exceeding those of contact sports. I’m very surprised to see this happen so quickly! The article said there was a push to return cheerleading to its original form- the pep squad model.</p>