Is cheerleading a sport? Answer still up in the air

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/MELISSA SUE GERRITS 11/21/13 - Benton Cheerleaders practice competition routines as well as game routines at Benton High School November 21, 2013. The girls' cheer practice takes place for 3 hours with warm ups and then practicing the steps and timing of various routines.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/MELISSA SUE GERRITS 11/21/13 - Benton Cheerleaders practice competition routines as well as game routines at Benton High School November 21, 2013. The girls' cheer practice takes place for 3 hours with warm ups and then practicing the steps and timing of various routines.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Correction: Since Dec. 21, Sheridan High School cheerleaders are the state champion cheer squad. Outdated information was in this article.

It requires strength, balance, technique and teamwork; results in sprains, fractures and the occasional knee surgery; encompasses recruiters, governing bodies and national champions. But should cheerleading, or “cheer,” be considered a sport?

What is cheerleading, anyway?

The Arkansas Activities Association, which has 488 member schools and oversees sports and activities for ninth through 12th grades, distinguishes between competitive and sideline cheerleading:

Competitive cheer pits teams against each other; they compete using 2 ½ -minute routines - musical blurs of tumbling, stunts, dancing and shouting - at cheerleading competitions.

Sideline cheer may involve the same skills, but the emphasis is on synchronized chants and school spirit, not on beating other squads.

According to the association, competitive cheer is a sport.

Sideline cheer is not.

But at some schools, the same squad does both. For instance, in Benton, the Benton High Schoolgirls are sideline cheerleaders, but they’re also highly competitive. In fact, they’re the reigning national champion team in Universal Cheerleaders Association competition.

Since the school doesn’t have two squads, fans at a Panthers football or basketball game see the bona fide champs.

Then there are All Star cheerleaders, unassociated with any school or league sport. These teams, ranked in Levels 1 through 6, are sponsored by for-profit cheer gyms and governed by the U.S. All Star Federation. Since 2004, the federation has held The Cheerleading Worlds competition for “elite” cheerleaders.

These athletes, Levels 5 and 6 cheerleaders from 40 countries, combine expert tumbling and sophisticated body-stacking with the stamina of mid-distance runners.

All Star cheer is a misnomer, because there’s no actual cheering. Even so, the Benton girls think that no one makes it on a top high school team like theirs without an All Star pedigree.

Taylor Robinson, 17, started cheering at a private gym when she was 5. When she was 10, she began cheering competitively. At 13, she first cheered for Benton.

“In junior high, you can make [the team] with a back-handspring, but I felt comfortable having a tuck,” she said.

Each girl on the high school team can execute endless back-handsprings, as well as the airborne back flip known as a back-tuck. Some of them whip through more advanced tumbling passes involving layouts and twists (variations on the tuck, incorporating straight legs and midair rotations).

“They’re smart. They can look around and see what those girls can do. And if they don’t think they can hang with it, then they’re not going to try out,” says Karen Hilborn, who coached Benton cheerleading from 1995 until May. This year, 25 girls tried out for 21 slots.

This demand for athleticism has increased over the decades. When Hilborn cheered for Benton Junior High School in the ’80s, one girl on her squad could do a back-tuck.

Robinson wears an orthopedic boot and has been sitting out recent practices due to an unlucky stunt-landing. She works with an athletic trainer provided for the school at no charge, and she hopes to recover in time for state and national championships.

“Stuff like this happens,” she says with a shrug. “It’s just a matter of getting back in it.” She wears the same outfit as her other teammates - pink T-shirt, matching athletic shorts, ponytail and perky bow.

A SPORTING DEBATE

Each day after school, the team gathers in a new multipurpose room at the school designed specifically for them. For nearly four hours, they run routines, stunts and tumbling on a floor layered with thick mats.

The athletic trainer is usually assigned to the football team, but the cheerleaders can request him if they’re planning an especially tough practice.

The most common injuries among the Benton girls are sprained ankles, although members of the squad have suffered ligament tears and a cervical fracture. Thirteen have visited the emergency room with cheerleading injuries, some of which were sustained during All Stars practices.

In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for cheerleading to be universally deemed a sport, so that it would receive support on the level of other athletic programs - certified coaches, athletic trainers, practice time limits and correct equipment.

But there are politics in labeling, as illustrated by a 2012 Title IX case in which a federal appeals court ruled that colleges cannot use cheerleading to fulfill sex-equity requirements for sports programs. Jim Lord, executive director of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, worries that if schools universally consider cheerleading a sport, they will quit investing in other women’s sports.

According to the pediatricians’ report, cheerleading has accounted for 66 percent of catastrophic injuries among female high school athletes in the past 25 years.

The American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, which certifies cheer coaches in Arkansas, implements new school safety guidelines almost every year. Robinson remembers doing basket tosses in junior high, but by the time she became a coach they were limited to high school. And for 2012-13, in the face of statistical evidence linking it to concussions, the organization banned the double twist to a cradle better known as the “double down.”

All Stars has its own guidelines, which means that some girls have been doing basket tosses and double downs for years, even though they’re not allowed to perform them ontheir high school teams.

In 1998, the International Federation of Cheerleading formed in Tokyo. With 100 member countries, the federation hosts competitions worldwide and has applied for recognition by the International Olympic Committee - the first step in making cheerleading an Olympic sport.

OLYMPIC PUSH

Cheerleaders were seen at the 2012 London Olympics, entertaining crowds during breaks in volleyball, basketball and handball games. But cheer was relegated to a support position - which, according to the Universal Cheerleaders Association, which hosts national competitions, and the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, which certifies Arkansas cheer coaches, is what cheer is all about.

Both organizations say cheerleading is not a sport. The distinction has nothing to do with the physical requirements.

“The competitions are secondary to the main function of the school cheerleading team, which remains one of building school unity and supporting the other athletic teams,” the coaching association states in a position paper. It labels cheerleading an “athletic activity.”

Hilborn says that the Benton girls “take a lot of pride in being a good support cheerleader, as well as a good competitive cheerleader.”

But among the cheerleaders themselves, there seems to be consensus. “I think everybody tries out for the competitions,” says Rachel Smith,a senior and team co-captain. The other cheerleaders, seated in a circle on the mat, nod emphatically.

One girl’s family moved from Lake Hamilton to Benton, largely so she could be part of this winning squad.

SCORING METHODS

But while elite All Star routines and competitive high school routines appear comparable, score sheets accentuate two different approaches. High school cheerleaders, at least those in Universal Cheerleaders Association-sponsored competitions, are judged on actual cheering.

Midway through their routine, the Benton girls break into about 30 seconds of actual cheering. (“We-are-Benton. B-E-N-T-O-N,” they shout, clapping pompoms and raising signs overhead.)

This cheering - which requires no athletic ability - has a weightier effect on the score than any other single element of the routine. So on a portion-for-portion basis, the cheering counts more than the hands-free flips or the muscle-quaking stunts.

According to Hilborn, the general public is more impressed by tumbling anyway. “The average person wouldn’t know if we were doing a hard stunt or an easy stunt. All they would know is if a girl stayed up in the air,” she says.

PREPARING TO COMPETE

There’s a lot of giggling and collapsing on mats at a recent Benton practice. But that doesn’t mean the girls aren’t serious about their skills. After all, they’re in the midst of a six-year state championship reign and in early February, they’ll head to Orlando, Fla., to defend their national champion status in front of thousands of people and ESPN cameras.

Their coach, Kacie Davis, estimates the trip will cost $30,000. The cheerleaders have been selling ads in football programs to raise funds.

“You’ve got it!” several girls shout, encouraging a teammate who’s been struggling to land a standing backtuck.

The general rule is, they practice a trick until they hit it three times in a row. “If you’ve got it three times in a row, then you’ve probably got it,” Robinson says.

The girls unanimously consider the kind of cheer they do to be as athletic as any sport.

“People are like, ‘Oh, we throw basketballs, we run,’ all that stuff. Well, we throw girls in the air. We hold people in the air for, like, a minute. It’s kind of hard. You have to have big muscles. And concentration,” says Mackenzie Pinkerton, 16, team manager. Last year she cheered at nationals before a knee injury forced her to transition to manager.

None of these girls seems concerned about whether or not cheerleading lands Olympic placement. Most Benton cheerleaders don’t even think they’ll cheer in college, although they probably could if they wanted. (Hilborn recalls a competition where an in-state coach offered scholarships to all the team’s seniors, without even asking which girls were seniors.)

What the Benton cheerleaders care about, here and now, is the 2014 National High School Cheerleading Championship.

“OK, go through the routine again, full-out, no marking,” Davis calls.

A few girls groan, and Rachel Smith speaks sharply: “We’re freakin’ Benton cheer. Come on.”

Her co-captain, Laura Beth Smith, speaks frankly: “There’s other good stuff, but the fun’s winning.”

ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 12/30/2013