They hurt themselves and break bones in competitions. Injuries happen all the time in cheerleading. Hmm but doesn’t any other athlete get injuries from their sports too? Cheerleaders should be considered athletes and cheerleading should be considered a sport too. We put in endless hours of work at practice. We sweat, hurt ourselves, and work until we get it right. It’s hard work. Were different from just any cheerleading time on the sidelines. We don’t use pompoms and jump around and screech. We work, we run around serious, lifting people, dancing, giving it all we got to win first place. Fiercely jump, flip, twirl, dance, and run around, we are definitely not the sideline cheerleaders on a Friday night football game. We are so much more.

Competition cheerleading is serious business. The crowd will always be 99% parents or other cheerleaders. Do we care? Yes somewhat. We want to feel like a sport. There are at least 4 million cheerleaders in thirty one countries. Cheerleading has been here for over a 100 years. Just like any other sport, right? Every cheerleader gets fired up when someone says cheerleading’s not a sport. For a sport, there must be physical activity which involves propelling a mass through space or overcoming the resistance of mass. Stunting, CHECK! That counts. Contesting or competing against an opponent is required to be considered a sport. Competition, that counts too! It must be governed by rules that explicitly define the time, space, and purpose of the contest and the conditions under which a winner is declared. The limit, matt size, score sheets. That’s another thing we have! Cheerleading requires you to be in excellent physical condition, same as any high-impact or high-intensity sport. The routines call on you to be loose and flexible with your body movements, and strong enough to support yourself and any other team mates as you go into many different jumps, turn, spins, twist, that show properly choreographed routines.


Many people have the thought embedded in their head that cheerleading is just looking pretty, twirling and cheering. There wrong though. Cheerleading takes strength, flexibility, conditioning, and endurance. We train a lot. Cheerleading takes sweat, tears, dedication, and heart just like any other sport. Our competition is no walk in the park like people think of it, they can last up to four days long and take all day and all night. Cheerleaders are really athletes!