http://youtu.be/3mENooomA3o

This may be a more playful example, but cheerleading can be for very dangerous sport. It has been reported that most high school sport related injuries come from cheerleading.

With next month being Cheerleading Safety Month, organizations such as UCA are taking extra steps towards making cheerleading a safer sport for all-star teams, youth rec teams, high school teams and college teams nation wide.

The University of Kentucky Wildcats Cheerleading Squad has won the Division 1A National Championship nineteen times since 1985. To many, they are the best of the best in cheerleading and the team to beat.

But with the intensity of cheerleading growing and all teams striving to be the most innovative, one team can only stay on top for so long. The past few years have shown just how difficult it can be to stay the best even for a team as prestigious as the University of Kentucky.

In 2011:

The University of Alabama

And just a month ago in the 2013 championship:

The University of Memphis

 

Though the standards of cheerleading will always continue to grow, performing a clean and difficult routine will always lead you to victory.

 

 

With the upcoming Super Bowl , everyone has something to be excited about. The game. The commercials. The food. The Halftime Show with Beyonce.  But in the hours leading up to the big game ABC Family has decided to celebrate the game in another way.

ABC Family is showing a Bring-It-On-A-Thon from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. with the last movie starting at 6 p.m. just 30 minutes before the kickoff of the Super Bowl.

Every sport has at least one movie that shapes the perception of the sport. Sports like football and basketball have Remember the Titans and Coach Carter. Cheerleading has Bring It On.

The movie itself shows how the sport of cheerleading has a deep culture of competition from the sidelines of a football game to the actually day of competition. In all five Bring It On movies the main theme is of two teams battling against one another to claim a title.

Though it is a comedy, Bring It On does show many aspects to the sport that only a coach or member of a team would understand. The main purpose of sports movies to inspire the viewer by showing them how a sport can up lift them through difficult situations and tough times.

In its own unique way Bring It On shows how cheerleading can be a difficult sport mentally and physically.

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.

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