All-Star Cheerleading Is Not A Sport? Thoughts From A Former Cheerleader

[TheCheerBuzz]

"Imagine dedicating years to a sport that gave you strength, confidence, discipline, and structure.

Imagine a sport that gave you confidence in yourself and became an outlet for you.

Imagine a sport that created lifelong friendships, skills, and determination to succeed.

Imagine trying your absolute hardest at practice and leaving exhausted only for someone to tell you that your sport isn’t real…

Something that you have worked so hard at and spent countless hours trying to achieve your own idea of perfection is considered….nothing."

Whole article: https://www.thecheerbuzz.com/cheerleading-is-not-a-sport-thoughts-from-a-former-cheerleader/

 

[catlady]

I'll answer the question and it has nothing to do with uniforms, being female dominated, someone hasn't tried it, or it looks too easy. It's money. Each time a sport is added in college, they are entitled to all the aid, benefits and services provided under Title IX. It would be great if things were approved based on "deserving" it, but sports are business, so you have to prove it in numbers. In college, there are two predominant sports that actually make money and often are subsidizing the rest. Football, and sometimes, men's basketball. That's it, those are the two main sports that are profitable and the rest of the sports rely heavily on their success of ticket sales, apparel, commercial revenue, and outside funding to be in the sport line up.

If the athletes of cheer want to become a sport, they need to do the projections and math to show how becoming a sport will benefit the school beyond spirit. They need to find out what their cost for their portion of Title IX benefits will be (scholarships, recruitment, books, medical services, tutoring, etc), as well as, all other expenses of equipment, storage, building/utility costs for practice time, insurance, uniforms, practice wear, etc. They will then need to establish a ticket price and do a projection for ticket sales, and then deduct all expenses. Anyone can say "we deserve it," but it's another thing to provide the projections of how much cheer will cost, and it will cost, in addition to what it can bring to the sporting community over and above spirit teams. Food for thought, I'm 100% sure a certain business has already done their homework and concluded, at this point and time, if cheer is given sport status most schools would just cut it out of their budget. There are many articles out there on how COVID19 has impacted sports, and they open your eyes to the "con" side of that sport title if schools can no longer afford it.

Power 5 conference schools rely heavily on those revenues to underwrite other sports.
“Football is 85 percent of our revenue,” LSU athletic director Scott Woodward told Sports Illustrated. “That says it all. It is the engine that drives the train.” <article>

 

[catlady]

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[TheCheerBuzz]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Those are some very interesting points of view, like having to actually show what it could bring to the school and what it would take.

Do you have any similar thoughts about the Allstar side of cheer and its "sport status"?

 

[NavarroNewb20]

Purely a fan perspective here, but yes it is a sport. It is sanctioned and there are competitions for it (at least all-star. Don't know anything about college cheer besides what I see on TV sidelines). Also, it is athletic, which says "sport" to me, versus chess or maybe even e-sports.

 

[catlady]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Those are some very interesting points of view, like having to actually show what it could bring to the school and what it would take.

Do you have any similar thoughts about the Allstar side of cheer and its "sport status"?

All Star is a baby. The USASF was just established in 2003 to develop rules and regulations, and to put on Worlds. In 2006 the USASF created the IASF, and its mission: To bring structure, consistency, safety and growth to the global community of All Star Cheer and Dance. To grow and develop anything on a global scale where every country has its own set of laws and standards, your desire is to be met with the least amount of resistance and regulation, so you can provide consistency in the most cost effective way. In global terms, and just corporate life in general, every single change that has to made creates the domino effect everywhere else, and it takes a lot of time, patience, and money to work through them.

I feel as though my kid's entered AS at an interesting time in 2010. There were still many mom and pop EP's and the main complaint at that time was no score sheet consistency and not enough competition at events. Fast forward those next 5-6 years and there was tremendous growth in AS. I think we often forget, or just don't realize where AS was just a decade ago and it's extremely difficult to develop a clear path to anything with a relatively new and small population, when you have many working in different directions. I'm not stating one path is better than the other, I'm just pointing out the obvious obstacles to develop something on a global scale going different directions. Soccer was played differently all over the world for 2000 years, but it wasn't until 1815 where universities began agreeing on specific rules. Time, patience, money.