Just Because Cheerleading Is Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s a Sport [View all]

Erin Gloria Ryan

Two, four, six, eight, to whom do we not allocate? Cheerleaders! At least, that's what the Second US Circuit Court has ruled in a case that pitted women's volleyball against competitive cheerleading. According to the ruling, although cheerleading is physically demanding, it doesn't qualify as a Title IX sport, and therefore a cheerleading team isn't a suitable replacement for another women's athletic team. As it should be. Replacing volleyball with competitive cheerleading as it exists today would be a huge step back for women's sports.

The girl jock-on-girl jock drama began in 2009, when Quinnipiac University announced that it was cutting its women's volleyball team and replacing the squad with a competitive cheerleading brigade (is that the proper terminology for of a group of cheerleaders? Let's say that it is). The volleyball team sued to preserve its existence, and in 2010, a federal judge ruled that under Title IX, cheerleading isn't a sport. The school, apparently dogged in its quest to be rid of the volleyball menace, appealed, and yesterday, the Second US Circuit Court handed down an almost identical ruling to the federal judge. Cheerleading isn't a sport, and cheerleaders aren't athletes — at least, not under the law.

While it may seem kind of head-scratching to call cheerleaders anything but "athletes" — their Aly Raisman-like tumbling passes and difficult pyramid maneuvers require training and can lead to the same sort of broken bones and torn ligaments one might suffer after a padless football practice — Title IX defines "sport" and "athlete" differently than a physical fitness test might. In order to be a Title IX "sport," the activity must have coaches, practices, competitions during a defined season, an organization that governs the sport and standardizes rules, and have competition as its primary goal. Competitive cheerleading is still, at its core, "cheerleading," and until very recently, it existed primarily as a way to rile the crowd up so they get good and excited to watch men's sports. Women's volleyball was never an activity that got the crowd going for men's volleyball. You can't win a gold medal in Olympic cheerleading.


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http://jezebel.com/5932885/just-because-cheerleading-is-hard-doesnt-mean-its-a-sport?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
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I agree with the ruling, but suspect others may not. My neighbor's daughter does competitive cheering, and while I recognize it is athletic, imo, it doesn't meet the definition of a sport. ESPECIALLY in this case, where it would eliminate the Women's Volleyball team.