Still Believe Cheerleading Isn’t a Sport?
What I learned from allstar cheer
When you think of the word cheerleading, what comes to your mind? The stereotype displayed in most of society today would consist of a ditzy, trashy, or mean high school girl jumping around in a mini skirt. This foolish display of who cheerleaders supposedly are completely destroys the worldwide view on cheerleading.
When I think of cheerleading, I see my whole entire high school career. I see the late night bus rides, the friendships, the football games, the hard work, and the commitment. I also remember joining my first all star team, Northern Lights Allstars, and experiencing the countless hours our team spent practicing through blood, sweat, and tears just to achieve perfection for a two minute and thirty second routine. This routine was performed in front of hundreds of people and a panel of five or so judges. We did this not only to bring home countless first place medals and jackets, but for the pride, to say you got the chance to be a part of something absolutely amazing. You get the chance to savor so many memories and create forever lasting friendships with not only your teammates, but also your coaches. I remember becoming part of a family. I also learned discipline, that if you want something that bad, it’s going to take hard work. Sometimes you’ll even fail several attempts before you reach your goal but you just have to get back up and try harder next time.
Even though I had this overwhelming pride in my sport, there was something really disturbing that I noticed. When other people asked me what sport I played I still felt slightly embarrassed when I told people that it was cheerleading. I loved this sport to the moon and back but still looked for negative responses in people when I told them. I did get them too. The eyebrow raises, the smirks, I even had people tell me straight to my face that cheerleading was not anywhere close to a sport. This attitude is highly popular among many people, yet cheerleading seems to be more demanding than a lot of sports. Rennee R. Arlington of Heights, IL writes in Teen Ink that, “According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, cheerleading is the number-one cause of serious sports injuries to women. Emergency room visits for cheerleading are five times the number then for any other sport, partially because they do not wear protective gear. While many athletes are equipped with hip pads, knee pads, shin guards or helmets, smiling cheerleaders are tossed into the air and spiral down into the arms of trusted teammates.” I think this is some pretty convincing evidence on how physically demanding cheerleading is.
So let us define what a sport is; according to the Oxford Dictionary a sport is “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” Well we have competitions like defined and like any other sport that have strict rules and regulations like any other sport. If we do something against the rules during our routine we are automatically marked down. If we drop a stunt or it even bobbles we get a deduction. If someone touches down in tumbling we get a deduction. Even if one person is off by a split of an eighth count in the jump sequence, points are deducted. The routine has to be pure perfection. The physical exertion part is pretty clear if you watch any cheer routine. Jumps, stunting, and tumbling all take enormous physical exertion and team work.
Ken Bain’s, “What The Best College Students Do,” includes a portion where he discusses the three brains a person contains. This connects well to my experience as an all star cheerleader. The Spock Brain controls learning and memory, the Alligator Brain triggers the flight or fight response, and the Pleasure Brain controls happiness and the ability to enjoy. I believe I used all three of these brains as a cheerleader and in some ways every single one was helpful in my success.
Jumping
Toe touches, pikes, and herkies, are all jumps that take great skill to do correctly. Your legs must be straight, your toes must be pointed, and arms straight out but slightly in front of you. Jump sequences, even though they might seem simple, take a lot of energy to complete and are a major part that the judges watch and critique.
Stunting
Stunting is probably the biggest part in the world of cheerleading and the part the audience pays most attention too. A regular stunt group consists of four people, the backspot, the two bases, and the flyer and every single one is crucial for the success of the stunt. The flyer is the one in the air that pulls the body positions while keeping their balance and squeezing every single muscle in their bodies to make the stunt lighter and easier for the bases to fix if needed. The backspot is the person in the back that helps push the stunt up and squeezes the flyer’s ankle to keep them steady. The backspot does everything in their power to keep the stunt up. The bases are the two on the bottom that use their powerful arm and leg strength to be a platform for the flyer to stand on. Communication between the whole stunt group is absolutely necessary. What you see here is called a single base stunt and is very popular in coed cheerleadng. As you can probably tell this is very physically demanding for not only the bases and back spots but for the flyer as well.
Tumbling
Tumbling is also an enormous part of the routine, we have a section just dedicated to every person running across the mat at full speed to throw the unique tumbling skills they have. This does not just involve cart wheel and round offs. There’s back handsprings, back tucks, layout, punch fronts, and fulls. These are all skills also performed by olympic gymnasts. Learning these skills takes years in a gym to get perfection and even then anyone could over rotate a full or mess up a landing at competition. These passes require concentration and also a great deal of bravery, this category is where a lot of cheer injuries occur. I would have to say that tumbling was the hardest part of cheerleading for me. This was a situation where my Alligator Brain hindered my success. Tumbling blocks are horrible and attack you mentally. One day I could do a roundoff back-handspring tuck on the tumble track, and the next day I had to have my coach spot me in a standing back-handspring because my mind was too scared and physically would not let me do it. This only made me stronger though as I learned to push through my obstacles and come out better than before.
Flexibility
Something also very important to cheer leading is flexibility. Flexibility is crucial for flyers but are also helpful for tumbling and jumping. Flyers need the flexibility to hit good body positions such as a heel stretch, a bow and arrow, a scorpion, or what you see here, a needle. Dedicated flyers could spend up to several hours a day stretching but even people who don’t fly can benefit from stretching. With strecthing, one can get more out of their tumbling and get higher or even hyper extended jumps.
Teamwork and Dedication
It was a few weeks before our first competition when the highest level team in the gym, senior level four, lost a girl to injury and asked if I could fill in. I was so new at the high competitive cheer and was terrified of letting them down but I said yes anyways. I knew that this team would be harder than the team I was on and you bet it was. They put me in as a base in one of the center stunts and told me to start working. Even though I was mainly a back spot and had never based before, I picked it up quickly and learned their entire routine in a few practices. This took great dedication because at this point in time I was on two all star teams, senior level three and senior level four AND the varsity team at my high school. This meant that I was cheering around twenty hours a week. I also had to cheer at high school games, competitions, and most of the time came into the gym for extra practice hours to try and perfect my skills. This is where my Spock Brain was at it’s peak trying to memorize all three of my routines while balancing school work and other issues.
I ended up staying on the level four team and finished the season off with them. The best part of the whole season was the traveling. We got to go to Washington DC, Providence, Rhode Island, and many other competitions. I eventually adapted to hotel beds and long car rides. I basically lived and breathed cheerleading during competition season and thought of nothing else. I didn’t even want to think of anything else because I was having so much fun. One of the situations that my Alligator Brain came in handy was on the competition mat. As we posed there on stage with hundreds of fans screaming and blinding lights on us, adrenaline shot through my entire body. The music would go on full blast and then boom the routine was over in a flash. This adrenaline was exactly what I needed to get through every stunt and every jump and still be able to scream, jump for joy, and hug my teammates when it was all over.
The competition that changed our lives forever was in Hartford, Connecticut. I remember the few practices before this competition where our coach pushed us and pushed us. We did full out after full out. A full out is when you do the routine and do everything in it, like you were really performing it. Those practices that contained so much sweat, tears, and frustration payed off when we one first place and grand champions of the entire division. We also received an at large bid to The Summit in Orlando, Florida. The Summit is like worlds for any team below level five. It is basically like the National Championships. Only ten percent of the cheer teams in the country get to compete at this competition every year; it is where the best of the best compete. We were the first team from New Hampshire to ever receive a bid to this prestigious event and I was so humbled to be a part of the history making team. We got to stay at Disney World and competed against thirty or so teams at the ESPN World Wide of Sports Center. We may not have made it to finals but we went out there and did what we do best as a team. The picture above is my team and I in our first stunt sequence at The Summit. This is where my Pleasure Brain kicked in full blast, and always will when I think back to that moment.
So my question is, how are people still saying that cheerleading is not physically demanding? I learned so much one learns from any other sport from cheerleading, and yes, the injuries are very high. I remember going to Hartford with a full concussion and pushing through the routine both days to get that bid. I remember fracturing my arm tumbling and going to practice the six weeks I was in that cast and running through the routine with my team. I remember having mono and still practicing day and night, several days a week, doing ten full outs a practice, then going to DC and winning first place. I remember hyperextended elbows, sprained ankles, and tendonitis. Girls on my team would go to competitions sick and throw up before going on the mat, do the routine, and then run off when it was over to throw up in the trashcan backstage. I watched so many people dislocate and break things during practices and the minute they were cleared, they would run back onto the mat. I also remember a girl fully breaking her arm during competition in her first tumbling pass and doing the rest of the routine until the end, which required her to do back handsprings and base with a broken arm, just for the team. We are fully dedicated to our sport like any other athlete would be because it means the world to us. I would do anything in the world and relive all of that to just have the experience again. I will never forget the amazing friendships and memories I made. People will always have their opinions on cheerleading on whether it’s a sport are not but to me, its much more than a sport. That’s all that matters because nothing in this entire world will ever change what that sport means to me.
