You my say that group prayer and individual prayer is different but no matter how you pray you are still praying to the same person. When my family has prayer at the dinner table it is a moment of silence for everyone to say their own prayer and to them it is just the same as being in church and reciting the same prayer outloud. A church is a completely different place then a cheerleading gym, unless you run it like T&S where church is a part of their gym.
I ask this question, if you were at a practice and a muslim athlete decided to pray inside of that gym how many of those other athletes are going to question what that athlete is doing? How many parents in the viewing area are going to wonder why this athlete is doing this? You don't need exact numbers and I know in some cases nothing will be thought of it, but I have learned that many people will question it. Now that athlete has the right to their own faith and to pray when they want, so do you tell those parents and athletes that are uncomfortable with it to suck it up or do you tell the athlete to please not do that in the gym or to wait until after practice is over? If the christian kids are allowed to hold prayer inside the gym then are the kids of other faiths going to be allowed to hold their prayers as well? It is sad to think about but we live in a society here in the US were MANY people look down on the muslim faith and believe it is a bunch of garbage and link it to nothing but bad things so a situation in a gym where parents and athletes get upset over a muslim athlete praying in that gym is a very realistic thing and I am interested to hear how people would handle it.
