Everyday after school I have cheering practice, and I have to change into shorts and t - shirt before practice. One day I walked up to my homeroom teacher and asked him if I could go change, and this was his response: “For what?”

I said, “I play a sport after school..”

“Really? What one?” he asked.

“I cheer,” I replied.

“That’s not a sport!” I certainly did not agree. Cheering is a sport.

There are two different kinds of cheering: recreational cheering, like at football games, and competition cheering. There’s a big difference. Recreational cheering is what a majority of cheering squads do. They usually don’t compete. They stand on the sidelines, yelling out cheers and dancing, which is not a sport. Competition cheering is way different!

At competitions, cheerleading squads represent the school they attend and compete against other cheering squads. They show their dance that took skill, tons of practice, and patience to learn. Without those traits, cheering wouldn’t be as organized and professional as it is.

People don’t agree that cheering is a sport because a majority of cheering squads don’t participate in the competitions. They stand on the sidelines at sporting games yelling out cheers, keeping the crowd busy and entertained during halftime. People say cheerleaders don’t do enough physical movement to be called a sport. At practices they don’t do drills or run laps. They just stretch out, then practice yelling out their cheers and tossing girls in the air. Why would they have to run laps or do drills if thats not involved the sport they play? They shouldn’t - so they don’t.

Competition cheering meets all the standards of what an activity needs to meet to be an actual sport. The Woman’s Sports Foundation (WSF) has set rules that qualifies a recreational game as a sport:
A physical activity which involves propelling a mass through space or overcoming the resistance of a mass
A contest or competition against or with an opponent
Is governed by rules which explicitly define the time, space and purpose of the contest and the conditions under which a winner is declared; Competitive cheering meets all of that criteria, so it is technically considered a sport by the WSF.

The definition of ‘sport’ is “ an organized, competitive, entertaining, and skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, and fair play, in which a winner can be defined by objective means. The sport has to be governed by a set of rules or customs.”

That’s exactly what competitive cheering is! It’s an organized, entertaining physical activity that requires skill, and determines a winner at the end. Cheering’s one of the most organized sports played in higher levels. Almost every college in the US, if not all, have a cheering squad that does compete in competitions as well as cheer for a sports team.

Sometime in the future people, including my teacher, will come to their senses and say cheering is truly a sport. For now, everyone who is educated about cheering will know and agree with this fact.