Cheerleading: A Sport

Cheerleading could easily become a recognized sport. There will need to be clear definitions, standard rules, safety regulations, competition rules, and judging regulations. When cheerleading becomes a sport then the athletes that compete would achieve higher recognition that they do now and become entitled to full college scholarships. The benefits to making cheerleading a standard sport outweigh the costs. Competitive cheerleaders are required to acquire many skills before they can get chosen for a squad and compete. It is a team sport because all of the cheerleaders must perform in unison and work together to achieve complicated stunt sequences. With just some easy changes cheerleading will become a sport. The first step to cheerleading

Currently different competitions each have their own rules. Even two different groups are competing to become the group to establish cheerleading as a sport. “USA Gymnastics announced it will sanction meets among the six schools that have had varsity competitive cheer teams, a competing plan was introduced by USA Cheer” (Associated Press 2010). Both USA Gymnastics and USA Cheer would like to to become sanctioned by the NCAA to make cheerleading a sport. There are major differences in the competition rules even for high school and college versus all-star cheerleading. The competition floors are a major difference. For high school and colleges competitions are held on mats, while all-star cheerleaders compete on a spring floor. Standard rules would be an easy start to making competition cheerleading a sanctioned sport. It would just take the established groups to come together and agree to work together for the greater good instead of

All judges need to be trained by one organization. Varsity, which is one of the largest vendors in cheerleading, has established a judging protocol for the upcoming year. “Moving into the 2015-2016 competition season, all judges will now need to be a registered member with Varsity All Star” (Varsity All Star n.d.). This will standardize judges in Varsity competitions, but this needs to be enlarged to contain all judges for all competitions using standard rules and scoring guidelines. This would also eliminate competing gyms from having their coached judge against rival gyms which is a common occurrence in today’s