Alizye Holloway
3/12/15
Period 8
Cheerleading is a sport! I have been a cheerleader for eight years of my life, since I was six years old. Take my word for it, it is fun, but it’s not easy. You have to be dedicated to the team, spend long hours after school practicing for games, and wake up early to get ready to go to games. It’s just the same as any other sport. Survive the tryouts, and be a proud member of the team. It seems like cheerleaders are preppy and happy all of the time, but in some cases that’s not true. How can we be happy when people who have never been a cheerleader try to tell us that it’s not a sport? Well, any cheerleader out there can tell you that, without a doubt, cheerleading is a sport. In fact, one of the most dangerous sports there is. A sport is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others” according to the dictionary. Firstly, cheerleading involves a lot of physical activity. Not only do we have to try to stay in shape, but how do you think we throw those girls high in the air? You lift weights, we lift 120 pound people. Secondly, the team practices almost every other day of the week to perfect our routines to perform in games. If you ask me, this describes the exact definition of “sport”. Another common misconception about cheerleading is that it is “easy” and it’s “not dangerous”. Cheerleading is not easy. To even be able to cheer in games, that means hours every week after school learning, practicing, and repeating. I’d love to see a football or basketball player try to be a cheerleader for a week. The reason they think it’s so easy is because they’ve never tried it. Cheerleading is just as physically exhausting and as
dangerous as any other sport as well. In the years I’ve been a cheerleader, I’ve witnesses broken thumbs, broken arms, fractured ankles, sprained necks, countless concussions. Now these are just minor injuries! In worse cases, girls end up paralyzed or even dead. To think we go through all of that pain for games and sometime competition. This is what we work for. We go out and face hundreds of people and an entire panel of judges.
