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Cheerleader)
Cheerleading is recreational activity and sometimes competitive sport involving organised routines including elements of dance and gymnastics to encourage crowds to cheer on sports teams. It is most popular in the United States, where it originated as an organized activity. A cheerleading performer is a cheerleader.
Cheerleaders in formation.
History
Evolving in (all-male) colleges in the late 19th and early 20th centuries purely as attempts to encourage crowds at their sporting competitions to cheer, the practice spread and became largely a female activity as time progressed. A significant factor was limited availability of female collegiate sports. Organised cheerleading contests were formed; most high schools around the U.S.A. had formed cheerleading squads by the 1950s. Today cheerleading competitions are a ubiquitous feature of American public schools and universities as well as American professional football. State and national championships for school and college teams are common, and top squads take their routines extremely seriously.
While cheerleaders regard their sport as a serious endeavour, this is not a universal opinion. Cheerleaders are stereotyped in numerous television shows and movies as vacuous, sexually attractive and vain. The cheerleader has traditionally been one of the one of the most prevalent fetishes in pornography. Furthermore, the typical high school cheerleader is stereotyped as an intellectually deficient, vain, white female with a spacious social circle and an attraction for jocks/male athletes (usually high school football players). This behaviour usually arouses contempt among high school subcultures in the lower order. In this view, cheerleading performances are purely showing off of the cheerleaders' bodies rather than a "real" sporting competition. Cheerleaders point to the athletic and aesthetic qualities of their routines, and the extensive physical training and rehearsal required to win competitions.
At the opposite end of the stereotype spectrum is the notion that cheerleading is too dangerous. Occasional charges of this nature surface in the media every now and again prompting a flurry of school and recreation boards to ground, if not outright dismantle, their cheer teams. However, studies show that cheerleading is at least as safe as many other sports which are a part of the school extra-curricular activity roster. 7 cheerleaders per 1,000 comprise annual emergency room visits as compared to 15 per 1,000 basketball players and 75 per 1,000 in football. Catastrophic injuries in the sport of cheerleading are rare and are on a par with the number that occur in the sport of basketball. Again, football far outpaces cheerleading when it comes to injuries, especially the most devastating types.
Performance elements
A cheerleader is flipped upside-down during a pep rally routine before a football game.
Motions/Jumps
- Common cheerleading motions are high V, low V, half-high and half-low Vs, diagonals, K's, L's, T's, broken T's, touchdowns, low touchdowns, tabletops, and punches.
- Varsity or toe touch is a jump with legs split sideways while touching both toes simultaneously.
- Hurdler The free leg is either forward (a front hurdler), or sideways (a side hurdler.)
- Pike is among the most difficult jumps. Both legs are straight out, knees locked. Arms are stretched forward to create a folded position in the air. This is often performed at a ninety-degree angle to the audience in order to show off the air position.
- The most common approach to a jump is the "prep" jump. On counts 1-2 arms are clasped, knees are together and bent. On 3-4, stand up on toes and raise arms in high V. Swing arms around in front and jump on 5-6, stand stationary and stand up on 7-8. Other approaches include power, banana, and double whip (actually two or more jumps.)
- Quite a few moves are borrowed from dances (Breakdancing/Hip Hop) and acrobatics (e.g., Cartwheel). Others are made up by the cheerleading coach or the cheerleaders themselves.
Stunts/Tumbling
- a Mount is a cheerleading stunt that involves 2 or more persons to form a type of "stunt" holding the girl in the air on either one or two feet.
- Flyers are cheerleaders held or thrown by others into the air. Bases or mounts hold and throw them. Spots are cheerleaders who stand behind the flyer and the bases that have two duties: 1. To make sure that the stunt does not fall and to help catch the flyer if it does fall and 2. To help the bases by lifting some of the flyer's weight, making the stunt more stable and less heavier for the bases.
- Stunts that groups perform include bow-and-arrows, liberties, scorpions, the Matrix, basket tosses, elevators, and cupies* (the ultimate in cheerleading athleticism.)
- In competition and most college level cheerleading tumbling is a requirement. The basic tumbling is a cartwheel or a round off. The more difficult skills come when you a back hand springs and round off back hand springs. There are also back tucks, layouts, and layout twists.
Cheers/Chants
Every team has their "signature" cheers and chants. They tend to differ by sport cheered for. (e.g., basketball or football.) Most of the time the cheerleaders and coaches come up with these cheers/chants, although there are a few professional cheerleaders who specialize in this area, such as Krazy George Henderson.
Competitive Cheerleading
Competitive Cheerleading involves a squad of anywhere between 2-40+ girls that are completely dedicated to cheerleading. The squad prepares year-round, but they only actually perform for 2 1/2 minutes in their competitions. During those few minutes on the floor a squad covers everything from stunting to tumbling to dancing.
Competitive cheerleaders are placed into divisions which are grouped based on age and difficulty. Judges at the competition watch for illegal moves from the group (or any of its members). Here, an illegal move is something that is not allowed in your division. More generally, judges look at how well stunts went up and came down, how sharp the dancing was, how varied the tumbling routines were, how well the group members entered and exited, and how loud the cheer was. They use these criteria to place cheerleaders into their divisions.
There are dozens of different competitions per season. Companies that run them include AmeriCheer, US Spirit, Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA), National Cheerleading Association (NCA, the very first), Cheerleaders of America (COA), FCC (Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders), JamFest, US Spirit, and many more.
The squad members will all have identical uniforms, including bloomers, bows, socks, skirts, and more. No jewelry of any kind is tolerated, as it is a safety hazard and then a point deduction.
Competitive cheerleading is a major time and financial commitment, yet it is a rapidly growing sport and industry.
Cheerleading movies
There have been several movies made with cheerleading as the central theme. These include:
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom cheerleading is traditionally seen by many as alien to British sporting culture, and some attempts to introduce it, for example in the early days of Premiership football, have been abandoned after receiving widespread derision. Nevertheless it is slowly becoming more popular. There is a British cheerleading association which holds national competitions every year. The majority of squads tend to focus on competing but there are several sports teams that have a cheerleading squad to support them. These are usually rugby league teams such as Leeds Rhinos. Cheerleaders in Britain can range from the age of six or seven, up to university students and they all mix together and compete in competitions consisting of cheer, dance and stunt categories. Mascots are often used in cheerleading troops.
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