All-Star Nbc Nightly News Cheer Story

[yojaehs]

Just gonna put this out there but ALL NCATA schools are run as "sports" supported by their Universities and Medical Staff. I'm way more in favor of NCATA than STUNT. But on the high school level I see this being more of a problem than a solution. Unless high schools coaches are required to go through a week long hands on safety clinic, this is all going to be a wash and just more drama.

 

[redsmom]

MissBee If school cheer becomes a sport, it can fill a Title IX requirement. They may not be so quick to get rid of it.

Title IX only applies to college though, right? I assumed this applied mostly to high schools.

Cheer is already a "sport" in Massachusetts in high school. I got a Varsity letter for it, though that doesn't mean we're actually taken seriously or anything.

It is also a "sport" in many counties in Maryland. But I would say for every gain made by making it a sport, there was a heavy price to "high school cheer" as we knew it. (At least in Maryland, many of these changes were all under the guise of Title IX compliance.) The most significant changes were 1) the events for which they were required to cheer and 2) limits on the competitions they were permitted to attend. High school cheerleaders in our county have to cheer at an equal number of boys and girls events. On the surface, that doesn't seem like a bad requirement, until you start having them show up at volleyball games where they must sit quietly in the stands (sort of like having cheerleader at a tennis match!). During the fall season, our cheerleaders cheer at home football games (they can only cheer at an away game by giving up a home game), boys soccer, girls soccer, girls volleyball, girls field hockey and cross country, leaving little time for practices and competitions.

I feel like instead of focusing on equal opportunity in girls sports and truly treating cheer as a sport, they have instead focused on cheer as "supporting" other girls sports equally with boys sports, which in my mind is not the same as "being" a sport. (If that makes sense.)

 

[NJ Coach]

Title IX only applies to college though, right? I assumed this applied mostly to high schools.

Cheer is already a "sport" in Massachusetts in high school. I got a Varsity letter for it, though that doesn't mean we're actually taken seriously or anything.

Title IX also applies to HS

 

[WorkToWin]

It is also a "sport" in many counties in Maryland. But I would say for every gain made by making it a sport, there was a heavy price to "high school cheer" as we knew it. (At least in Maryland, many of these changes were all under the guise of Title IX compliance.) The most significant changes were 1) the events for which they were required to cheer and 2) limits on the competitions they were permitted to attend. High school cheerleaders in our county have to cheer at an equal number of boys and girls events. On the surface, that doesn't seem like a bad requirement, until you start having them show up at volleyball games where they must sit quietly in the stands (sort of like having cheerleader at a tennis match!). During the fall season, our cheerleaders cheer at home football games (they can only cheer at an away game by giving up a home game), boys soccer, girls soccer, girls volleyball, girls field hockey and cross country, leaving little time for practices and competitions.

I feel like instead of focusing on equal opportunity in girls sports and truly treating cheer as a sport, they have instead focused on cheer as "supporting" other girls sports equally with boys sports, which in my mind is not the same as "being" a sport. (If that makes sense.)

wow, my school only cheers for football, basketball, and volleyball all year.

 

[cheerheart4life]

Oh hey I see myself :cheering:

 

[MissBee]

MissBee If school cheer becomes a sport, it can fill a Title IX requirement. They may not be so quick to get rid of it.

This is true, however-budget cuts may force them to cut both boys and girls sports. For Title IX the biggest concern is how many spots they can take. This can either be a positive or a negative for cheer. The negative is that there are cuts (where many sports, like soccer/track/field hockey don't make cuts in many places), this would limit the number of Title IX spots, which means if cheer and field hockey have the same expense but field hockey carries more on the roster, cheer is cut and hockey stays. The positive, is that when it comes to roster there is no set team size for cheer. You could have 8 one year and 32 the next year. So if it's between cheer and basketball (just for arguments sake), cheer could offer 32 Title IX spots and basketball would only offer 11, basketball gets cut. Now, I know that would never happen, but maybe with a sport like volleyball it would.

Some districts are having a difficult time funding athletics and are cutting them, or going to a "pay to play" system, where there is a fee (some places it's $200-300 just to join a team).