Think of the word “cheerleader” and you’re probably thinking of pom poms, short skirts and a ditzy girl. To make matters worse, France has started calling cheerleaders “le pom pom girls.” I thought the same thoughts when I heard the word “cheerleader” five years ago. I grew up playing volleyball and basketball since the age of nine and didn’t know much about cheerleading. Then I entered ninth grade; the year where you meet new people and try new things. I remember trying out as a joke and after three tryouts (trust me, I was surprised I even made it past the first tryout), I somehow made my high school’s co-ed competitive squad. I slowly began to dive into this crazy world of cheerleading. I began to realize it was one of the most hardest sports I had done, and to this day, I still can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that it’s not an official sport. If you were the “previous me”, I’m hoping this list will bring light to your view of cheerleading.
1)We lift and throw people, not weights and balls. In other words, cheerleading is a physically demanding sport. Cheerleaders are expected to have a certain flexibility; a rare quality to find in athletes. Often, common-sport athletes are too focused on strength and weight training that they forget to work on flexibility. However, in cheerleading it’s crucial for athletes to have strength to hold one another and themselves up in the air (literally), but to also be flexible enough to hold air positions and execute jumps. In 2013, the Huffington Post released an article claiming that cheerleading was the most dangerous contact sport. In some way, I guess you could say cheerleaders compete not only in a sport, but an extreme sport.
The UW and Western team showing some teammate lovin at the homecoming reunion game in September 2014!
2) It definitely has a competitive nature. The NCAA states that for an activity to be considered a sport, there must be some other party to compete against. If competitive eating and fishing are sports, it only makes sense that cheerleading is as well. Similar to how other common-sports have tournaments, cheerleading has its fair share of competitions. Each team is roughly given two minutes and thirty seconds to show off the routine they have been working on perfecting their entire season. This routine is a combination of stunting, tumbling, jumps and dance.
3) It’s a combination of two other sports; dance and gymnastics, plus more. It’s simple math; one sport plus another sport plus another wicked element of stunting equals an extreme sport.
4) We train just as much as normal athletes do. During my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I remember spending hours after school in the gym with my cheer team. When competitions were close, we would find ourselves in random open gyms at gymnastic centers, practicing on Sunday nights (that’s right, you read right; Sunday nights) and professional development days that were supposed to be “off days.” There weren’t any off days in my opinion, I would find myself counting beats and marking out my routine wherever I went, especially when no one else was watching (cough, cough the washroom). Although conditioning was lightly integrated in our practices, we were still expected to condition and train on our own. My coach had printed a calendar with a set of workouts we were expected to follow each month. If you weren’t following that calendar, it would definitely show when conditioning became the punishment of practice…and let’s just say, you’d want to save the embarrassment for yourself!
5) It brings a whole other meaning to “teamwork.”
Nothing spells teamwork more than having three girls hold a girl up in the air or better yet; having one guy hold up one girl in the air. There’s some type of extra adhesive cohesion and trust that must exist in a stunt group for stunts to go up successfully. Stunts, or what the public will often refer to as “tricks” must be in time with all other stunt groups for the routine to look put together. Teammates must literally act as one and be one.
6) We’re performers and athletes. Some athletes grunt as they play, but cheerleaders do it all with a gigantic smile on our face. We hope you enjoy our facials.
So the next time you think of “cheerleader” or “cheerleading”, give it a second go and by all means, if you ever feel like getting a taste of our very own Warrior Cheerleading, drop by 8pm – 10pm on Thursdays at PAC Blue North. It’s an open gym, plus we don’t bite…despite what our facials say otherwise!!