Summer Camp Scorecard

In many high schools and colleges in America, cheerleading is life. The cheerleaders live for it, and practicing is all they look forward at the end of a normal day at school. Many young teens all gather up together and prepare whenever there’s a cheer audition held at their school. And just recently, it has been officially introduced as a sport because of the amount of discipline, physical exertion (that even exceeds some other sports), and high risk maneuvers involved in it. To date, there are hundreds of thousands of cheerleaders around the world who join in competitions, and that alone may be enough to call cheerleading a sport.

But where has this sport started, and how has it reached its status today? Like other sports, it has a long history which started way back in 1880’s at a Princeton football game. There were no rules at that time, but it did what it had to do: excite the crowd and make them cheer for the teams as well! But it was Johnny Campbell, a student at Minnesota, who got the credit as Modern Father of Cheerleading in 1898, where together with other young men, they held the first "yelling". He was then officially made the first cheerleader in November 2, 1898, and that was also the official date of the birth of cheerleading.

Back then, they had no cheerleading choreography yet, and yells were mostly done by the men included in the squad. It was not until in 1923 that female cheerleaders were introduced, because of the lack of female games to be participated at that time. It was then that gymnastics and other dance routines were introduced, and some of those dance routines are still very much alive today. When before cheerleading squads were predominantly male, now female cheerleaders comprises the majority of the cheerleading squad, and leave the men to do the lifting and heavy work.

It was in the 1980s that the complex routines, cheer choreography dance steps and maneuvers were gradually introduced and noticed by many. A few years later, the first televised cheerleading competition was broadcasted nationwide, and got many surprised and interested. More rules and safety standards were formulated later to ensure safety of the cheerleaders when performing complex stunts and choreography. In 2003, after a series of discussions and debates, it was formally introduced as a sport, and although some objected, to the cheerleaders and its former members, it meant a lot; that finally, their efforts and perseverance finally paid off and was recognized.

Today, cheerleaders are still seen in football games, basketball games, even ice hockey games. But for some teams, cheering at games became a second priority, and sort of a practice game for their main goal, which is the national cheerleading competitions. At the nationals, only the best of the best are accepted, and training for it takes weeks, months and even years. A single error in the routine may cause an entire routine to be disrupted, so training is really vigorous and requires a lot of both physical and mental strength. If you’re not up for all of this, it might be better to quit from the start, or not join at all.

There are 3 major categories of cheerleading today, and that is High School Cheerleading, College Cheerleading, and All Star Cheerleading. High school and college cheerleading of course involves students in their respective schools, and also join competitions at least annually. For teams that do good in competitions, they are usually given incentives and funding by the school. All Star Cheerleading on the other hand, have cheerleaders that are not part of any other team, and also join competitions; but training in an all star cheerleading is known to be intense, and have coaches to train their athletes. Unlike the first 2 ones, cheerleaders in all star usually pay for the training and membership.

Same as other sports, there are dangers that must be watched out for in cheerleading, with all the modern choreography and difficult routines, someone is bound to fall and get hurt once in while. In fact, cheerleading accounts for a big number of school-related injuries, and without someone watching over and implementing safety rules and regulations, more innocent kids and teens might get hurt. It is important to have fun while doing a sport, but it’s more important to protect our bodies at all costs.

Tags: cheerleading choreography | cheerleading choreography | cheer choreography | cheer choreography | choreography | choreography

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under Teams sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.