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Is cheerleading a sport?

Is cheerleading a sport?


  • Total voters
    26
for a college student you sure seem to eschew learning. He coached Simon Fairweather to an olympic gold medal among other things

how about you? do you have a varsity letter?

Junior Olympics 200 3rd place in forms and sparring in my weight division in the country. Regional qualified at least 3-4 times to go to nationals but master wasn't around to train me for those other ones. Trained by iranian national team members in fairfax, VA as a kid. Trained with the TKD ITF world champ of some year from kyrgizstan while in Kazakhstan. Havent been active in a couple years cept for some brasilian jiu jitsu and mauy thai for a couple months at a time on and off.
 
Junior Olympics 200 3rd place in forms and sparring in my weight division in the country. Regional qualified at least 3-4 times to go to nationals but master wasn't around to train me for those other ones. Trained by iranian national team members in fairfax, VA as a kid. Trained with the TKD ITF world champ of some year from kyrgizstan while in Kazakhstan. Havent been active in a couple years cept for some brasilian jiu jitsu and mauy thai for a couple months at a time on and off.

not bad-I won the inaugural Junior olympics in an ISU shooting discipline many many years ago-

now lets go back to the issue. my premise (and that of many leading coaches-I am master level coach in one discipline, and certified in two sports) is that competitions that involve reacting to and anticipating an opponent while disciplines do not-for example, how I shoot a rifle is not affected objectively by how the guy 30 meters to my left is shooting. Yes, he might beat me if he scores better but he cannot prevent me from shooting a ten, nor can i block his rifle shot
 
Knowing a few now grown women who were cheerleaders in their younger years, I'd say the majority of cheerleaders are without a question athletes but cheerleading is not a sport. My wife's sister was as close as you can get to being a pro in cheerleading. Her body is pretty solidly built and she could outrun most guys that I personally know. Regardless though she herself has said that it's not a sport. I saw someone saying cheerleading is about looking cute but they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. How many backflips can you do? How much weight can you lift? These are all things cheerleaders work on. It's not just about looking cute and screaming really loud.
 
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No. Chearleading is not a sport. Synchronized swimming is not a sport. Diving is not a sport. (EDIT: Dance isn't a sport either.)

A sport must involve competition involving actual, objective, quantitative scoring. None of this judges deciding who looked cooler crap.

Gymnastics is one of the most demanding sports there are. Are you going to argue that it isn't a sport? You are inputting a definition that is not generally held as a criteria for "sport-hood"
 
do you understand the difference between a "sport" and "discpline" Many coaches do including Mr. Kisik Lee, current US olympic archery coach who notes archery is a discipline. Its a martial art he correctly notes but a discipline like the KATA while the TKD in the Olympics is a pure sport as is boxing.

Most boxing matches are decided by judges. Now, unless you want bouts to go on until someone gets blugeoned to death, you can't claim boxing is a sport by your artificial criteria.
 
sport as defined by many coaches I have dealt with-(of both disciplines like archery or sports such as table tennis and my old coach, Lee, Dal Joon) involves having to deal with and countering the actions of an opponent. Dodging a punch from a boxer, returning the serve of a tennis player, blocking the blitz of a defensive back, avoiding the slide tackle of a sweeper in soccer, returning the loop drive of a table tennis player, countering a leg shot by a wrestler, blocking a jump shot of a power forward, or fielding a screaming line drive of a hitter are all example of why those competitions are sport.

disciplines, shooting an arrow, throwing a javelin, clearing a high jump, putting a golf ball, dismounting a pommel horse, doing the Iron Cross on the rings, diving, trampoline, shooting a free pistol, perform a triple axel for example

So, poker, chess and mahjong are sports?
 
for a college student you sure seem to eschew learning. He coached Simon Fairweather to an olympic gold medal among other things

how about you? do you have a varsity letter?

So, you think everyone who has a varsity letter (high school or college) should know the name of a little known coach in a sport they are not involved in?

For the record -- 15 high school letters and 8 in university....
 
To me, a sport involves competition beyond, "Ours are cuter than yours." Is there competitive cheerleading? Is there a yearly schedule of cheerleading competitions? The answer is no. Therefore, it is not a sport to me.

What matters, though, is Title IX's definition of a sport. The Dept of Education hasn't ruled on this since 1975. We haven't seen the last of the case, I'm guessin'.

There are absolutely cheerleading competitions. In fact, there are about 100 "national" competitions per year, plus many hundreds of regional, local and state competitions. It's huge business and it's extremely competitive. Cheerleading competitions get plenty of airtime on various sports channels.

It is absolutely a sport and it harms many, many girls every year because it doesn't get the safety funding that other sports get. More girls get injured in cheerleading accidents than any other high school sport, bar none.
 
I think people in this thread should watch the episode of Penn & Teller:Bull**** on if cheerleading is a sport. It's very interesting.
 
Competitive cheerleading is definately a sport that required more athletic ability than some sports out there like bowling and arguably baseball...

ballet requires more athletic effort than many sports. that is not what makes something a sport
 
So, you think everyone who has a varsity letter (high school or college) should know the name of a little known coach in a sport they are not involved in?

For the record -- 15 high school letters and 8 in university....

no-but when a guy is considered one of the top coaches in the olympic movement with one of the best records in history and a doctorate in sports I suggest his opinion would count a bit more than say yours.
 
So, poker, chess and mahjong are sports?

not at all. they are competitions but since they do not require any athletic skill-hand eye, endurance, quickness, agility, speed, they are not sports.

they are games.
 
Most boxing matches are decided by judges. Now, unless you want bouts to go on until someone gets blugeoned to death, you can't claim boxing is a sport by your artificial criteria.

that is not the criteria

math tests are objective but they are not sports. wrestling is decided by judges to. Strikes are decided by umpires btw in baseball
 
Gymnastics is one of the most demanding sports there are. Are you going to argue that it isn't a sport? You are inputting a definition that is not generally held as a criteria for "sport-hood"

gymnastics again is an athletic DISCIPLINE

you seem to labor under the delusion that I am denigrating such an event by calling it for what it really is. No one is saying a discipline is less demanding than a pure sport. But gynmanstics does not involve you dealing with your opponent's actions. You can do your ring routine a hundred miles away from your opponent and as long as the same judges score the event, the competition does not change. Its hard to play tennis or box against someone not on the same court or ring with you.

So lets deal with the fact that calling an event an athletic discipline or a sport is not a value judgment and some events-as I Noted, lack a track race, is mixed in the sense it is between the two
 
George W. Bush thought it was a sport when he was in Cheer-leading. That's good enough for me.
 
not at all. they are competitions but since they do not require any athletic skill-hand eye, endurance, quickness, agility, speed, they are not sports.

they are games.

But they involve responding to what your opponent does. I am not arguing they are sports by the way, but your definition is much more narrow than most people accept...
 
dictionary definition said:
sport   /spɔrt, spoʊrt/ Show Spelled[spawrt, spohrt] Show IPA
–noun
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

Cheerleading definately falls within this definition...
 
Cheerleading definitely falls within this definition...
It would seem that ANY activity, if it involved "skill or physical prowess", and if a competition were organized for it, would then be a sport.

Chess. Poker. Solitaire. Pool. FPS gaming. MMORPGS. Guitar Hero competitions.

Pen spinning... (Reference News of the Weird, for more)

And yes, that other activity mentioned as a "competition" at some point in News of the weird, that also requires some level of “skill”, and most likely “physical prowess”, of a sort…
 
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