High School Very Little Respect From Other Female Athletes

[paintdog1]

Three of the girls on my travel softball team are high school cheerleaders. I admire them a lot for their dedication to both sports, but they take a terrible ragging from the other softball players. I expect some of this stereotypical behavior from boys, but it's a little hard to take from other female athletes. I hope this isn't typical. My daughter did both sports and never ran into this problem. Any thoughts?

 

[cupieqt]

When I was in high school I was also on the softball team, along with 4 other cheer teammates. The rest of the team called us the Bow Heads. We were freshman so we just laughed it off. We didn't play the next year though and they missed us :)

 

[Oxx3rinxxO]

Our school never respected us as athletes because we weren't very good, but still worked very hard. We also would have practices late at night in our elementary school, and my coach didn't really like stunting at games. Last year, I think it was women's basketball or maybe field hockey had a shirt that actually said "if this was easy they'd call it Cheerleading" my coach flipped out and a lot of us were very angry! Times have changed and we have gotten so much better and showcased our skills and it has gone down drastically with the yelling, taunting and stuff at games.

 

[CricketCheerMom]

Our school never respected us as athletes because we weren't very good, but still worked very hard. We also would have practices late at night in our elementary school, and my coach didn't really like stunting at games. Last year, I think it was women's basketball or maybe field hockey had a shirt that actually said "if this was easy they'd call it Cheerleading" my coach flipped out and a lot of us were very angry! Times have changed and we have gotten so much better and showcased our skills and it has gone down drastically with the yelling, taunting and stuff at games.

WOW! I would be pissed if I were you coach. They have to run all that stuff by administration here.

 

[Oxx3rinxxO]

WOW! I would be pissed if I were you coach. They have to run all that stuff by administration here.

Yeah she brought it to administration, and they said they couldn't wear the shirts on school grounds or something, but they still wore them to football games and stuff.....very unfair :/

 

[cheernerd5678]

A lot of people tell me that they do a "real sport" but I just kind of laugh it off. All my friends have figured out that it's not worth arguing with me about it, because if you're my friend, I WILL argue. But not if I don't really know you. I think we're pretty respected (when they aren't throwing things at us) especially since a lot of us tumble, so they are impressed by us. We really got a lot of respect doing our state routine at an assembly, a bunch of non-cheer people were like "YOU GUYS ARE SO GOOD"
Our girls basketball team LOVES us so they don't bug us about it... But I do feel like other girls who are athletes in recognized sports tend to look at us like we aren't. Until they talk to me, of course ;)

 

[KDCheerMom]

I just watched the Twinkles video (which was very good by the way). But when the question of gymnastics versus cheer comes up - the coach/trainer says - you don't remember who was on your gymnastics team but you remember who was the cheerleader - the popular girl, the homecoming queen.

 

[sophieann]

I just watched the Twinkles video (which was very good by the way). But when the question of gymnastics versus cheer comes up - the coach/trainer says - you don't remember who was on your gymnastics team but you remember who was the cheerleader - the popular girl, the homecoming queen.

This stuck out to me in Twinkles video also, and I think it definitely holds true. I get recognized all the time in a town of over 100,000 people and two public high schools even though I graduated HS almost 3 years ago - "hey you were on cheer right?? weren't you captain?? I was in your chemistry class!!"

I do not mean to offend anyone with this, and I played other sports (volleyball, basketball, soccer, track, cross country, and softball) both in elementary/middle school, as well as high school. I would just like to suggest that maybe the reason cheerleaders don't get as much respect as they would hope from other female athletes is because of things like cheer's relation to beauty, girly-girls, and popularity. People from high school will remember me as just being cheer captain; however, with other sports, classmates might remember you with things like "she was the best player on our basketball team!" Cheer is its own little world, we could go out and do a 360 to a lib, tick tock to heel stretch and then full down and most people won't know what it is other than it looks cool. But if a girl scores 24 points at a basketball game or has 3 RBI's at a softball game, people generally know what that means.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I tried to compile my jumble of thoughts as best I could haha. :oops:

 

[GreenStormLucy]

I just watched the Twinkles video (which was very good by the way). But when the question of gymnastics versus cheer comes up - the coach/trainer says - you don't remember who was on your gymnastics team but you remember who was the cheerleader - the popular girl, the homecoming queen.

I loved when he said this. I believe it was the tumbling coach?

I think every athlete should respect other sports athletes, but real world is not rainbow country.

I stopped explaining people what i do when i tell them i'm a cheerleader and they say: Hey, you jump around at games with your pom poms, right? What team do you cheer for?

If i feel the person is really interested, i will explain. But most are not.

It's so sad that school teams don't support each other :-(

 

[cheysmomager]

A lot of people tell me that they do a "real sport"

If you want, I can sick my CP on them!! ;) By the time she's done with them they will believe cheerleading is the only real sport!! :rolleyes:

 

[Ems]

I dropped a class my first semester of college because I was made fun of. It was a sport psychology class that I really enjoyed, but it was full of "real athletes." The softball players kept saying "all cheerleaders do is kick" even though they were at the football games and saw us doing tuck baskets, 2 and 1/2 high pyramids, and tumbling. They would do what you see in movies, where they sit in their little huddle in class and whisper, look up at me, then go back to whispering.
There was also a football player who made a completely rude and sexist comment about cheerleaders in class and the teacher (the former women's basketball coach) didn't do a thing. So I dropped it.

 

[cheerisloving]

For us, our school is split. Our males love us and are support us. But girls, are the worst for the most part. A lot of personal conflict with one member, contribute to how they feel about us as a whole which sucks, because girls that dislike teammates in turn hate cheerleaders. But overall we are respected after recent years new coach, tumbling stunts. And of course the routine helps too.

 

[xomckenzieee]

I played volleyball/soccer/softball and cheered and had friends from all four. They would tease me and stuff but at the end of the day they did respect me as an athlete and one of my best friends always teased me that not only do I have to work hard, I have to look good doing it too, which I loved. At my high school, we had to cheer for the girl's basketball team and needless to say neither side wanted anything to do with that and that's something you just have to deal with. But we gained a lot of respect when we had football players decide to cheer and they made a statement saying they work harder at our practices than theirs... but it's all about opinions. If we let them get to us, they win.

 

[paintdog1]

This stuck out to me in Twinkles video also, and I think it definitely holds true. I get recognized all the time in a town of over 100,000 people and two public high schools even though I graduated HS almost 3 years ago - "hey you were on cheer right?? weren't you captain?? I was in your chemistry class!!"

I do not mean to offend anyone with this, and I played other sports (volleyball, basketball, soccer, track, cross country, and softball) both in elementary/middle school, as well as high school. I would just like to suggest that maybe the reason cheerleaders don't get as much respect as they would hope from other female athletes is because of things like cheer's relation to beauty, girly-girls, and popularity. People from high school will remember me as just being cheer captain; however, with other sports, classmates might remember you with things like "she was the best player on our basketball team!" Cheer is its own little world, we could go out and do a 360 to a lib, tick tock to heel stretch and then full down and most people won't know what it is other than it looks cool. But if a girl scores 24 points at a basketball game or has 3 RBI's at a softball game, people generally know what that means.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I tried to compile my jumble of thoughts as best I could haha. :oops:

I thought it made perfect sense! Thanks.