Is cheerleading a sport? YEA: Cheerleaders’ hard work shouldn’t be overlooked

Let me preface this by saying that if you declare cheerleading not to be a competitive sport, you may as well extend that definition (or non-definition, if you will) to gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and a host of other athletic endeavors whose scoring is based on the subjective whims of judges as opposed to direct competition.I’m not sure any of us wants to go down that road, even if we do feel that by our strict, manly-man standards they do not qualify.I’ve always weighed in on this debate (and it happens often among my circle of friends) thusly: if said athletic endeavor either involves direct confrontation between opponents or a scoring system that is totally, 100 percent unambiguous, then you can call them “competitive sports.”The subject comes up, obviously, after Connecticut federal judge Stefan Underhill declared Wednesday that Quinnipiac University couldn’t drop volleyball and institute cheerleading as a competitive sports tradeoff and remain compliant with Title IX.Underhill’s objections to such a setup were specific to how Title IX – instituted in 1972 to ensure gender equity in sports, among other activities – defines a sport. They were not philosophical.This doesn’t mean we can’t be, though.My reasons for taking the “Yea” position here are that this ship has sailed. Sports such as figure skating, gymnastics, diving, and all the others that don’t involve direct hand-to-hand confrontation, or whose scoring systems rely on judges as opposed to statistics that can be measured tangibly, are ingrained into our athletic culture.Regardless of what I may think of them personally, in the minds of most, they are sports. And they are sports because regardless of what I may think of them, they require a tremendous amount of athleticism.And in that sense, cheerleading has come an awfully long way from the day when I was in high school. These days, cheerleaders do a lot more than dance around at football games and decorate the players’ houses the night before the “big game.” Most of the time, their routines – especially in competitions – involve moves that do not differ very much from a gymnastics floor routine. There is tumbling, acrobatics and – of course – the usual building of human pyramids.Cheerleading competitions are so common now that we even have them at the youth levels. Four years ago, a cheerleading squad from East Lynn won the national championship in Orlando, Fla. I’d like to see someone tell those girls that what they did wasn’t a sport.Of course, the devil in me always asks, “well, if cheerleading’s a sport, then why isn’t dancing a sport?”Honestly, I don’t have a rational answer for that, even though, Lord knows, I would disagree with anyone who said it was!The thing about it is this: These types of endeavors are more competitions than sports, per se. They all require tremendous dedication and grueling practice. Anyone who performs in them risks injury, and they require their participants to be in top physical condition.So even though I may have my own definition of what constitutes a “sport,” this is one of those issues where the die has been cast.So now, all Quinnipiac University needs to do is figure out a way to conform to Title IX when it comes to cheerleading, and they’ll be all set.So sayeth the judge, anyway.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.