What is Cheerleading?

 What is cheer you may ask, or why is it so important, well this first blog post will give you everything you may need to know, or have never known about the great sport of cheerleading. Cheerleading is an intense physical exercise based on organized routines, usually anywhere from one the three minutes, which contain many components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting Cheerleading originated in the United States, and remains predominantly American, with an estimated 1.5 million participants in all-star cheerleading. Because of recent exposure, there are now an estimated 100,000 participants scattered around the rest of the world in countries including Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Cheerleading is mostly a girl dominated sport, with about 3.5 million cheerleaders in America alone, and occasionally there are a few male cheerleaders. Teams with male cheerleaders are normally very good because of the additional strength for stunts, and generally males are very good tumblers because of their strength and ability to be fearless when learning new tumbling skills.

On a cheer team there are many different roles such as, coaches, bases, back spots, and flyers. Bases hold up the flyer, the back spot holds the ankles and makes sure the stunt doesn’t fall, and the flyer is the person being thrown into the air. Every job is needed for the team to function correctly. Cheerleaders have to be very dedicated to what they do because it’s not just yelling out cheers it’s a team sport, where they throw human beings into the air and somehow catch them before they hit the ground.

There are many different types of cheerleading, which I will go more into detail in a later blog, but basically there is High School cheerleading and competitive cheerleading. Within high school cheer there is sideline cheer, which helps cheer on players and people watching the game. Usually high school cheerleaders, cheer on athletes in sports such as basketball, wrestling, and the most popular, football. Also some high school cheerleaders can compete in competitions competing against other high schools. The more popular form of cheerleading is competitive cheerleading. This type of cheer takes true dedication because of the long hours at the gym running your routine over and over; until you think you might just about die! This form of cheerleading incorporates many advanced tumbling and stunting skills depending on what level of team you are on. I will continue more in depth about all of these subjects in my later blog posts. Make sure you read my next post all about the history of cheerleading and how cheerleading has changed since the beginning.