ABC Nightline posted this article on Jan. 4th.
Most Dangerous ‘Sport’ of All May Be Cheerleading
With No Regulatory Framework in Place, Cheerleading ER Visits Have Skyrocketed
Currently Cheer is the target of a lot of negative press, some of it deserved.
In the past Trampoline Sports were a media target. At other times, elite Women’s Artistic Gymnastics. Many times I challenge comparatively uninformed journalists when they make misstatements.
But it’s hard to dispute much in the ABC video – When the Cheering Stops (8min)
Embedding disabled by request of ABC
I do think Cheer needs to do better at training and certifying coaches, especially in tumbling.
On the other hand, there are a surprising number of superb coaches and athletes for a comparatively new sport. Some of the spotters are as good as the best Artistic coaches.
Over the past 10yrs I’ve been converted to a Cheer fan. It’s wonderful to see so many hundreds of thousands of athletes participating.
Update: Check the comments. Geoffrey Taucer feels different.
We need to do more to educate the general public on the health benefits of Cheer.
11 comments ↓
I’ll be honest: I really see no reason for cheerleading to exist as a sport. It doesn’t really cover any ground that isn’t covered (and covered better) by artistic gymnastics and acrobatic gymnastics.
Cheerleading COULD BECOME a safe sport, but it certainly isn’t now, largely because so many coaches don’t have a clue what they’re doing. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had cheerleaders coming into the gym wanting to chuck backhandsprings when they couldn’t even do a handstand.
Accidentally hit submit. Continuing my post:
In order for cheerleading to become safer and more respectable as a sport, the first thing that needs to happen is that the coaches need training. This isn’t football or soccer, where some random mom or dad with no training can come in and do an adequate job. The sorts of acrobatics being done in cheer these days are dangerous, and need to be respected accordingly. Cheer needs coaches who understand the risk and understand how to safely and properly train the skills.
The other problem with cheerleading is that it seems to be a magnet for spoiled diva parents trying to live vicariously through their kids, which is ALWAYS a recipe for disaster.
I mentioned your name in the original post, Geoffrey. Your opinion is far more the norm than mine, when it comes to gymnastics coaches.
But I wish you could see the Cheer team that trains in my gym. Excellent coaching. They are the topped ranked team in Canada right now, however.
I should say, I don’t doubt at all that there are exceptions. I know there are gyms and coaches out there that train cheerleaders with care for safety and technique. There are cheer programs that are respectable in their approach to the sport.
But everything I’ve seen of cheer suggests to me that these are the exceptions, not the norm.
I do not doubt that your gym has a spectular cheer squad, and I do not doubt that doing cheer with a good coach can have many of the same benefits to physical and psychological well-being that gymnastics can.
But such coaches are way too few and far between.
Somewhat on this note but with a slight tangent from the safety aspect, competitive cheerleading is going to be the death of women’s college gymnastics (so far as the US is concerned). So, in one sense, if you’re a fan of women’s college gymnastics, you should probably fear competitive cheerleading. Safe or not, covering the same ground as gymnastics or not, cheerleading is here and only going to get bigger. Which frightens me in more ways than one. If we fight it, we’ll lose. And if we try to make peace with it, we’ll also probably lose. And once college gymnastics is murdered, it makes me wonder what kind of impact that will have on upper level JO numbers. I can only speculate, but I don’t see any positive outcome for artistic gymnastics.
just like any gymnastics club it has to do with the parents and the coaches.
we have all gone to level 4/5 meets and been scared shitless seeing kids you KNOW were not ready to compete. the same thing happens in local cheer comps.
what i always say is that gymnasts do backhandsprings- cheerleads do flip flops-(they flip on to there hand and flop down)!!
Cheer hasn’t even managed to kill club gym yet. I’m pretty sure women’s collegiate is still safe.
It’s not Sher. I’ll explain: As of a few months ago, about 8 schools got together to organize competitive cheerleading and appeal to the NCAA requesting emerging sports status. The U. of Maryland already designates their competitive squad as a varsity sport, as does the U. of Oregon (which calls their team “Team Stunting and Gymnastics” though it’s not gymnastics). Baylor was in talks with a committee whose purpose is to promote collegiate gymnastics. Baylor was interested in starting a gymnastics team, but then cancelled. Instead, they formed a competitive cheerleading team and joined the other schools in the petition to the NCAA. Currently, the Office of Civil Rights does not recognize competitive cheerleading as a varsity sport for Title IX compliance. But their reasons for not doing so are incomplete, inconsistent, and dependent upon schools doing what they’re doing: self organization. The thing is, schools have started organizing and have petitioned, and they’re going to get it. Once the NCAA grants emerging sport status to competitive cheerleading, the OCR will be forced to recognize it, and other schools with struggling gym programs will realize it’s monumentally cheaper to field a cheer squad, which could also net 30+ girls instead of the 12-16 a gymnastics team fields. Which means gymnastics programs will be dropped (currently, I know of at least one that’s rumored to be on the chopping block), and cheaper and bigger cheer squads will replace them, and athletic directors won’t blink about making that decision since it’s a win-win for the budget and Title IX compliance. Add all this to the already declining attendance and interest, and all cuts already being made, and women’s collegiate gymnastics is as dead as men’s (in terms of schools offering opportunities) in 10 years.
A scary scenario, JAO. … But it sounds realistic.
Something similar is happening in Australia with Cheer becoming more influential than Artistic in the Gymnastics Australia organization.
… But I like Cheer. It should get NCAA recognition.
Oh I can’t argue with its recognition. When one starts deciding what is/isn’t a sport, there are going to be “iffy” choices under any classification system. It’s just not something that lends itself to easy delineation. Synchronized swimming, bowling, and (I think) shooting are recognized Title IX compliant sports, and competitive cheerleading is as much a sport as they are under any sport taxonomy.
A fair application of the OCR’s definition or requirements for sport status would absolutely accept competitive cheerleading. The OCR just hasn’t applied its definition fairly yet.
Which is the scary part: Cheerleading will get recognized, it’s unstoppable, and it will have and already has had a detrimental impact on gymnastics. The extent of the impact is debatable, and some might think that gymnasts want to be gymnasts and cheerleaders want to be cheerleaders, so there’s no cause for alarm. But I think, when staring down a non-scholarshipped spot on a gymnastics squad, or a scholarshipped spot on a cheer squad, some high school senior will weigh the pros/cons of it all and decide that cheering is physically easier, more popular socially, and less time consuming. If that influence causes even a handful of girls to quit gym, then crap.
Well, I I don’t think that just because some other sport becomes popular it means college gymnastics has to die. It just means people who care will have to do more to keep it alive. If no one cares, then maybe it shouldn’t exist anyway.
Personally, I think there’s more that can be done to help MAG and WAG collegiate gymnastics. It just takes people getting together to make it work. It takes people deciding that they’re not going to rely on the college to let them have a program. There could easily be a team at every high school and college in the US if nearby clubs would sponsor them. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with club college teams? Why does everything have to be “NCAA”? Honestly, I think the only thing that’s killing college gym is inside the box thinking.
Speaking of gymnastics Australia and cheer, whatever happened to USAG and cheer? I thought they announced some sort of cheer program a year or two ago. Haven’t heard anything about it since.
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