There has always been a heated debate on whether or not cheer is a sport or a form of art. Many cheerleaders argue that they work just as hard as any football player. With that argument, one could argue that other art forms like dance, song, or color guard should also be considered. The common argument from the other side claims being a sport is that cheer doesn’t compete in competitions like basketball would. However, this is untrue since cheer attended national competitions and won last year.
The California Interscholastic Federation states, “Only Traditional Competitive Cheer and Competitive Sport Cheer are considered CIF sports.”
At Aliso, cheerleaders do sideline cheer and traditional competitive cheer. The difference between the two forms of cheerleading is that sideline cheer is typically only performed on the sideline of football, basketball games and pep rallies. Traditional competitive cheer competes in competitions and at nationals every year. Just last year, Aliso Cheer was the Varsity Intermediate Cheer champion at USA Nationals in Florida.
An argument against cheerleading being a sport is the lack of competition they do have. Sports like flag football or lacrosse have a period of time, about a month, where they have games at least two times a week and then they have to compete in CIF, if they make it. Despite cheer being a yearlong sport, they really only have the Spring to compete with one another. Also, it’s never one cheer squad against the other, it’s schools from all over Orange County, California, or even across the country. The element of supportive fans is also almost completely gone because many students are not willing to travel to other schools or venues since it’s not two teams actively going against each other.
When asking students their views on the matter, they have a common consensus that cheer works very hard in what they do, but there is still a debate on whether or not it’s a sport.
ASB student, Lyla Fernadez (10) says, “They wear letterman jackets, they have practice every single day, and attend weight room regularly.”
Unfortunately, these examples are not valid in showing that cheer is a sport, however, it does demonstrate that cheerleaders are dedicated to their craft. These arguments are not valid because multiple other extracurriculars like marching band or color guard are commonly not considered sports and wear letterman jackets. In addition to that, many extracurriculars like the ones previously mentioned also practice every day and go to the weight room.
Jaqueline Torres (10) says, “I personally do not believe that they are a sport. Most of the time they just flip around at football games instead of going head to head with one another.”
In cheer, scoring is based on the routines they perform. The categories they get a score on are how difficult the routine is, how many people are in the overall performance, and the overall skill it takes to complete each move. Unlike in movies, cheerleaders from different teams don’t go directly against each other; it’s only announced after every team has shown their routine, and the judges decide who wins. So if people were watching they would never really know who was winning until the judges revealed it unless they had prior knowledge about different cheer routines.
No matter which opinion is correct, cheer is still an incredible thing to behold and no one can say that it doesn’t take time and effort in the different abilities they have to do in their routines.
