How Cheerleading Became A Sport On Its Own

By Richard Graham


Attending a sport event, even a minor event, has become synonymous with cheerleaders. One almost feel a little bit cheated if their are no cheerleaders at a sports match. Many people think that this is an American phenomenon, but cheerleaders can be found at events all over the world. They provide lustre to events and they work very hard at their art. In fact, cheerleading is popular everywhere, from Morganville NJ in the United States to Oslo in Norway.

In modern times cheer leading is almost synonymous with sporting events but the practice has an age old history. Descriptions of battles in the Bible include many references to special squads of men that blew their bugles, banged their drums and clashed their cymbals to instil fear in their enemies and to motivate their own armies. These special squads were nothing but cheerleaders. The tradition of employing special motivational squads during battle persisted throughout the ages.

In modern times, the first occasion of organised cheer leading was recorded at Princeton University in 1877. A small squad of male students taught the spectators of football matches a cheer and directed them towards chanting the cheer over and over again in support of their team. To this day Princeton use that original cheer. In America, the practice took hold at the University of Minnesota in 1884, when an old Princeton student introduced it there.

Females were not allowed to be cheerleaders until 1923 because it was viewed as unseemly behaviour for ladies. Only in 1923 did females first become eligible to be cheerleaders. This was also at the University of Minnesota. The idea of female cheerleaders did not find favour for a long time however. Only in the early forties did the idea of female cheerleaders catch on. Today it is an almost exclusively female sport.

The main purpose of organized cheering has not changed over the ages. The task of the cheerleader is to direct the spectators to cheer in unison, to chant special cheers and to motivate the team to perform better. In latter years, cheerleaders also started to fulfil an entertainment need. They would perform special cheers and movements prior to, during and after matches.

From the early sixties onwards cheer leading showed a sharp increase in popularity. By 1975 there were more than 500 000 cheerleaders in the United States. Being chosen for a cheerleader squad remains a great honour and in some cases it is even possible to make a career out of cheer leading. Squads no longer perform at sports events only. They compete against each other at tournaments everywhere in the world.

There is a dark side to cheer leading. Astonishingly it is the sport with the most fatal and serious injuries in the world. Fierce competition has led to trainers demanding ever increasingly dangerous and spectacular stunts and it is especially during pyramid routines that injuries occur. Other critics have condemned the fact that successful cheerleaders are expected to be beautiful and sexy.

There can be no doubt that cheer leading is a demanding sport. Participants need to master complicated movements and they need to be very fit. Competition is fierce and only the very best can expect to be selected to the top squads.




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