LITTLE ROCK — FOR A certain demographic slice of the 30-to-50 crowd, mostly among those with children, and especially those with daughters in the pre-teen or teen years, a ruling from a federal judge Back East has sent shock waves all through the community/ phone lines/facebook posts. Last week, a federal judge in Hartford, Conn., ruled . . . hold your coffee . . . that cheerleading is not a sport.
Not a real one.
He said colleges can’t use cheerleading numbers to meet requirements under Title IX, which was implemented years back to equal out the numbers of male and female athletes. To quote The Hon. Stefan Underhill: “Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX. Today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”
Huh? Where can His Honor have been for the past, uh, 20 or 30 years?Here’s our considered editorial opinion, and those of pert’ near everybody we talked to: Is this judge out of touch or just off his rocker?
Underdeveloped? Disorganized? When did this Learned Jurist graduate from high school? 1908? He must’ve never been to a high school football game in Arkansas. Or anywhere else. The cheerleaders and the band members can be a lot better organized than the ball players on the field trying their confused darnedest to execute that X-slant-70-double-option-on-two play drawn up by some delusional coach.
Let us just tell you about the young lady clad in blue at one particular high school in Central Arkansas we saw last year one fall night. She’s probably 15 or 16, maybe 17 by now. She jumped so high and did so many twists and turns on her way up and down and sideways that we thought she ought to go out for wide receiver in place of some of the boys in shoulder pads. Do you suppose she could catch? It’d improve the offense . . . .
If gymnastics is a sport, and if they give medals for floor routines at the Olympics, and if the young men and women are spending hours practicing their art in the hot August sun to get ready for the fall season, and a kid can break a leg, or worse, while performing for the crowd, you bet your sweet bleacher seat cheerleading is a sport. (And what’s this reference to “competitive cheer” in the judge’s opinion? He makes cheerleading sound more like a greeting or drinking contest. Does anyone-besides judges-call cheerleading cheer? We hope not. The language is in sad enough shape without this little bit of ESPNspeak.)
Maybe we should just invite the good judge down for a visit this fall. We’ll schedule it for a Friday night.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 07/26/2010