You are currently browsing the daily Archive for January 29th, 2013.
The public image of cheerleading can easily lead one to believe that it is a “sport” of glitz and glamour. From CMT’s “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” and coverage of professional cheerleaders during sporting events like NFL games as well as NBA games, the image portrayed of a cheerleader is a perfect body and pretty smile.
Though the actual sport of cheerleading has grown in difficulty and interest rapidly throughout the years, from the outside looking in cheerleading is still just girls in skirts, shaking pompoms to those who don’t participate or know much about the sport.
Cheerleading is unique in the fact that it takes aspects of different sports and combines them to create a crowd interactive and entertainment based sport. Though there are competitions and the sport can be very competitive based, the main goal of cheerleading is to interact with the crowd and get them to cheer on the team.
The cheerleaders most commonly known are referred to as “game day cheerleaders.” These are the cheerleaders who you see at football and basketball games with signs who cheer loud and support a school or team. The pompoms that cheer own your favorite team to victory. But when games are over the exact same cheerleaders tackle something more complicated than just “go team go”.
These are competitive cheerleaders. From the middle school to college level and all-star level, cheerleaders put down their pompoms and work towards creating an innovation, technical and high-difficulty routine to compete against others teams within in their division for the number one spot.
Though the sport of cheerleading originated with game day cheerleaders and may not exist without it, the sport has expanded to a complex event of athleticism and competition. With more spotlight on this aspect of cheerleading it’s hard to ignore the intense of growing sport.