Have your wife watch the episode of Buffy the vampire slayer with the cheerleading mom. If she seems ashamed, it's a good lesson. If she gets a gleam in her eye, run like hell!

DD cheers. I don't like it but have not shared that with her. She chooses her own activities and worked hard to make the team. They also cheer for the girls teams. While it requires athletic skill I don't consider it a sport because they don' t compete.

Anonymous wrote:I don't have a dog in this fight but...A federal court has ruled that cheerleading is not a sport.

Since the thread has drifted I thought I would point out the reason "cheer" is not considered a sport by the NCAA and most state high school sport regulatory bodies is that they do not want to take the steps necessary for cheer to be a varsity sport for title ix purposes. Why? Because if you do that you have to do two main things: (1) hold competitions and championships as in other sports. That would not be too difficult to accomplish. There are competition formats that could be adopted. More difficult is: (2) you must follow all of the rules applicable to varsity sports in general. That means rules on coach contacts, practices, seasons, hours per week, etc all need to apply to cheer. Start with, rules on a "season". A season has a start date for practices and competitions and an end date. High school cheer now will have often have tryouts in June andd practices/camps over the summer. Fall comes around and practices continue with appearances at football and other games. When are the cheer competitions? Oops. Can't be in the Fall. Those few states that do have cheer as a varsity sport tend to make it a winter or spring sport. But now you have way, way, too much out of season practices and coach contact. Violations that in another sport would lead to suspensions and forfeits. To get around this those states that have cheer as a sport do not do "sideline" cheer, but instead create a different set of rules. Michigan is an example. Missouri tried for a couple of years and gave it up because of the rules conflict.

Now, a school can still call cheer a sport and do things like give varsity letters. No problem. But, to be a sport for title ix compliance purposes - what a court is concerned with - the governing organization has to treat it as a sport. Most don't because cheer is too demanding.

As a European woman, I just about had a heart attack when my DD gave up non sport of Figure skating and decided to do All Star Cheerleading. To have all the women in my family work since WWII and then to have my own DD be a cheerleader? And now even on a High School team? Truly, it was just about the end of the world. I had my DH, American, tell me to let the kid do what she wants. He is not sporty at all, like me. So now, it ends up that I have a kid who did/does two non sports, according to DCUM and Olympic committee. Where did I go wrong? The good thing is that she really doesn't seem to care about cheering on a boy's team, she likes their routines and flying, and tumbling. She doesn't know the boys on the football team at all and somehow it is the lacrosse boys who catch her eye, on and off, or a total nerdy kid. They don't cheer on lacrosse team at all either. Overall I think it should be more on par with acrobatic dance and while in the All Star competitions, it really is a competition, the one thing I don't like is the dance part where I see somewhat unseemly moves, especially when you have very young girls doing it. But, overall, most of the girls are nice and not catty and evil at all. But, there are a few like those, who talked about not wanting "ugly" girls on the team. I was glad to hear my DD was mad at that girl for saying such thing, especially given that my DD is quite pretty as well. So, I really don't know, I overall wish she wasn't on it, but she is, and high level and it is scary when she flies up in the air and then you just hope she doesn't get hurt. And yet, no recognition since it is not considered a sport. So, I accepted, but I just don't fit with the other cheer moms and have stopped making any effort. As long as I don't impose my values on her, it is her life and her choice to do what she wants to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to say that while I can see that cheerleaders are very athletic and fit, I am uncomfortable with some aspects of High School cheerleading. I recently overheard a conversation between my freshman old daughter, on a JV sports team at school at a local public high school and her good friend, on the JV cheerleading team at the same school, in which my daughter asked why the cheerleading squad only performed at boys sporting events, and not at her's, or other sporting events involved the girl's team. Her friend didn't have an answer. I checked into it, and found out this was true, and it bothers me.

Why does it bother you? I am not American , but I thought that they traditionally cheer only at the football games. Are there anything wrong with that?

Well it's sexist. Why shouldn't girls teams have people specifically designated to cheer for them and get the crowd rooting for them? Why only boys teams?

Why do you have to make it all about sexes? How do you see it in practice: normally, they practice five days a week, attend one game on weekend and some competitions on weekends. How is it possible for a school team to cheer at more than one game?

Cheerleading is just like stripping. You wear half your clothes and dance around to make boys yell and hollar. Nobody takes this seriously.

Really tired of the "is it a sport" argument. Have you ever seen an Olympic cheerleading competition? No, because it's not a sport.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to say that while I can see that cheerleaders are very athletic and fit, I am uncomfortable with some aspects of High School cheerleading. I recently overheard a conversation between my freshman old daughter, on a JV sports team at school at a local public high school and her good friend, on the JV cheerleading team at the same school, in which my daughter asked why the cheerleading squad only performed at boys sporting events, and not at her's, or other sporting events involved the girl's team. Her friend didn't have an answer. I checked into it, and found out this was true, and it bothers me.

Why does it bother you? I am not American , but I thought that they traditionally cheer only at the football games. Are there anything wrong with that?

Well it's sexist. Why shouldn't girls teams have people specifically designated to cheer for them and get the crowd rooting for them? Why only boys teams?

I like it on It's Academic when the schools have some of the cheerleaders cheering on the academic teams.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to say that while I can see that cheerleaders are very athletic and fit, I am uncomfortable with some aspects of High School cheerleading. I recently overheard a conversation between my freshman old daughter, on a JV sports team at school at a local public high school and her good friend, on the JV cheerleading team at the same school, in which my daughter asked why the cheerleading squad only performed at boys sporting events, and not at her's, or other sporting events involved the girl's team. Her friend didn't have an answer. I checked into it, and found out this was true, and it bothers me.

Why does it bother you? I am not American , but I thought that they traditionally cheer only at the football games. Are there anything wrong with that?

Well it's sexist. Why shouldn't girls teams have people specifically designated to cheer for them and get the crowd rooting for them? Why only boys teams?

No, they also cheer at basketball games. However, yes, I do think that there is something wrong with the cheerleading squad only cheering at male athletic events. There are plenty of girls athletic teams out there now, and having cheerleaders present would lift school spirit and interest in these sports.

Anonymous wrote:I have to say that while I can see that cheerleaders are very athletic and fit, I am uncomfortable with some aspects of High School cheerleading. I recently overheard a conversation between my freshman old daughter, on a JV sports team at school at a local public high school and her good friend, on the JV cheerleading team at the same school, in which my daughter asked why the cheerleading squad only performed at boys sporting events, and not at her's, or other sporting events involved the girl's team. Her friend didn't have an answer. I checked into it, and found out this was true, and it bothers me.

Why does it bother you? I am not American , but I thought that they traditionally cheer only at the football games. Are there anything wrong with that?

I have to say that while I can see that cheerleaders are very athletic and fit, I am uncomfortable with some aspects of High School cheerleading. I recently overheard a conversation between my freshman old daughter, on a JV sports team at school at a local public high school and her good friend, on the JV cheerleading team at the same school, in which my daughter asked why the cheerleading squad only performed at boys sporting events, and not at her's, or other sporting events involved the girl's team. Her friend didn't have an answer. I checked into it, and found out this was true, and it bothers me.

Op,

I have a daughter who is in Cheereleading varsity team. She never was specifically prepped for it and never even had interest in doing it. She had several years of gymnastics experience in the young age, than a lot of dancing, than three years of swimming in the middle school. She got in the track team in the 9th grade, and then decided to try out for cheerleading in 10th grade since the track would not start until later in fall. She loved it and stayed for 11th grade as well.
I would never ever push my child to any sports to begin with. It is a time for them to try and explore themselves, so let them do it. Failure to get on the team will be a oriceless lesson. As to weather this a sport or not: the do have extensive training every single day Monday-Friday's, games on Friday nights or Saturday's and competitions over the weekends. Daily training involves a 3 hours of running, full body conditioning and stretching in addition to learning choreography. So, it is very intense and gives her a great lean body.

As to the concept of mean girls at the team, I have not heard from my daughter anything. I could see some of them might be that type ( it is just my pure observation). My daughter is nerdy, all A students, taking all AP classes, competing in the science contests and Olympiads on the National level, did STEM program at the Naval Academy, etc. So, there are no time for a bad behavior, but at the same time doing something that she enjoys after the school takes a lot of stress and pressure. She also was a new kid in this high school who came in the middle of the year, and I didn't see other girls been not nice to her even that she is not your typical cheerleading girl.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You mentioned your older DD not being in the "popular" group. Is it possible your DW just wants a different experience for your younger DD because she saw how much your older DD was effected?

OP here. Yes, definitely. They're also very different kids.

Given that, nothing you say is going to make a difference.

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty large contingent of credible folks who don't consider it a sport otherwise there would be no argument. There is no discussion of whether baseball is a sport because it clearly is. I know you think your daughter is pretty terrific, you enjoy watching her perform and she probably works hard but it is no more a sport than dance and it is silly to call something cheerleading when you are cheering for nothing and leading no one. I think ending with calling me stupid was a very classy touch and likely indicative of your hypersensitivity regarding this issue. Send her to "cheer" just once in a simple appropriately sporting outfit, no 1920s bow in her hair and no make up and see how well she does.

I have kids who do baseball & fencing and kids who do cheer & dance.

Cheer and dance are far more of a sport than baseball, fencing, football, volleyball, golf...