If it looks and plays like a sport..

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s recent championing of cheerleading as sport offers interesting questions to mull.
In February she published an opinion in the U-T San Diego outlining her position:

“Let’s stop fooling ourselves. Cheerleading is a sport, has been for decades, and it’s time that the California Interscholastic Federation start treating it that way in our high schools,” she wrote, citing the physical demands associated with modern day high school cheer. (Tangentially Gonzalez has authored a bill proposing to give professional cheerleaders the same rights as other employees of a professional sports team.)

If gymnastics — which are incorporated into many high school cheering routines — are enough of a sport for the International Olympic Committee then on what grounds does the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports, stand when it ignores or dismisses the idea?

Go to its website and the CIF directs you to an article by Rhonda Blanford Green headlined: Cheerleading is not a sport.

Blanford Green writes that cheerleading’s purpose from day one has been to support athletic teams and lead crowds.
She also writes that the Office of Civil Rights in the United States Department of Education has established criteria to help it define sports for Title IX purposes. Some of those requirements include a set season, coaching, tryouts, practice and competition, and having assigned and certified judges or officials.

While there may be cheer competitions judged and televised on sports networks like ESPN, you won’t find the same sort of competitive environments in any of the local high school districts during the school year.

Of course the most accepted and common understanding of sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill between competing individuals or teams.

When compared to traditional high school sports such as football, water polo or golf, the amount of physical exertion by a cheerleader is probably less than a starting lineman but more than a golfer during a 15-minute window.

So is physical exertion a fair and accurate way of defining a sport and/or an athlete? If it is, then just how much physical exertion must be expended in order to qualify someone as an athlete? Is someone who jumps and tumbles just as much of an athlete as someone who swings a club and walks a great distance?

Based on the activity itself you might be inclined to say the former is more of an athlete than the latter. But add the titles cheerleader and golfer and the opinion may be skewed.

Is cheerleading a sport? My old gut tells me no but my graying head says maybe. And while it’s a fun idea to ponder it’s not an issue worth getting tied up in knots — unless of course yoga is a sport.