Cheerleading Research Paper

Cheerleaders: dumb blondes with fake tans, short skirts, loud voices, and peppy personalities. They just yell and shake poms and jump around cheering for other teams. How hard could it be? This is how many high school students and adults would describe cheerleaders. Despite these commonly held perceptions, competitive cheerleading is a rigorous, mentally and physically challenging sport which requires extensive teamwork, practice, and commitment.

The Merriam Webster defines the word ‘sport’ as “a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other”. In cheerleading, a strong bond unlike you can find in any other sport cultivates. The people on the teams aren’t just teammates. They’re more than that. They’re friends. They’re family. They quite literally put their lives in the hands of their teammates every single day, just for the possibility of getting even a fraction better at what they do. There’s a trust that is not easily broken, in addition to a strong dedication to their team. And with that dedication comes practice. The average cheerleader practices about ten hours a week. (Yager). Some teams however, like Mira Loma High School cheerleaders, practice six days a week, eleven months a year. That’s roughly 792 hours of just practice spent with the
Building Skills, Tumbling Skills, Overall Routine, and Overall Creativity. Within these, there are a multitude of factors that come into play. Stunts, pyramids, tosses, standing tumbling, running tumbling, jumps, motions/dance, formations/transitions, performance, skills creativity, and routine creativity. (Jen). It waters down to overall impression, and they’re harsh on judging as well. If a stunt moves, or the flyer shakes at all, it’s marked down as a ‘bobble’, which is a 0.5 deduction from each of the on average, six