While going through the upcoming ESPN lineup about a week ago, I found something I hadn’t seen in a very long time, the UCA Division I-A College National Championship, the big cheerleading competition formerly known as the College Cheerleading Championship. The marquee event was the Coed competition, which apparently means an equal number of men and women. (There were also brief mentions of Small Coed [5 or fewer men] and Open Coed [dunno].)
It was an amazing event, constantly in motion, one high-flying skill (that’s apparently what the individual things they do are called, a la “elements” in gymnastics) after another, running, flipping, astonishingly high throws and flawless catches, and, oh yeah, they gotta do actual cheerleading on top of that. It was like sailboat racing, where I watched my first event in years and was immediately blown away by how much the sport has advanced. Whether or not you think this is a legitimate sport (and I consider it every bit as legitimate as soccer or baseball), it’s so full of action and color that you’ll never get bored. And yes, it’s nice that these dedicated youngsters who spend so much time propping up the school’s athletes get a chance to prop themselves up for a change. Commentary was spot-on as well; I’d take them over NBC’s figure skating team any day.
Lingering questions:
This is still a thing? I dimly remember something years back about the NCAA declaring it no longer a sport or no longer satisfying Title IX requirements or whatever? I definitely didn’t see it on any channel for a very long stretch. And apparently sport cheerleading never went away. Check it out, unbroken line from '78. Even Covid couldn’t stop it.
How exactly does one get into this? I understand the desire to root for one’s team in an official capacity, but how does waving pom-poms and shoulder lifts turn into “You know what would make this even better? An exhausting and potentially highly injurious gymnastics-style routine!”
The commentators didn’t have any time to go over the rules, so little help here. On numerous occasions I saw a woman’s skirt bunch up (given how much time they spend inverted, falling, having a leg held up, etc., it’s surprising it didn’t happen more often), and every time she immediately pulled it back down. Is there anything that says she has to do this? I assume it’s a presentation issue as cheer briefs have been more or less completely supplanted by higher-coverage shorts. (Hey, I care, dammit! )
(Unrelated event just to illustrate how young they start now.)
There are, in fact, two “types” of competitive cheerleading.
One is the one you describe - a team performs, and receives a 0-100 score. A school “gets into it” the same way it “gets into,” say, football, or water polo, or debate; you just ask the appropriate parent organization to join. Presumably, when it airs on TV, it is assumed that most of the viewers know most of the rules - sort of how nobody mentions in a football game that the clock stops on an incomplete pass. The main difference between “waving pom-poms and shoulder lifts” and “an exhausting and potentially highly injurious gymnastics-style routine”; the latter is a sport, which is important as school athletic budgets will now set aside money for it, as opposed to the first kind of cheerleaders having to resort to bake sales and car washes.
The other is called “Stunt”, and is more of a head-to-head competition. The quick version: two teams each perform the same routine simultaneously, and the judges decide which team made the fewer mistakes; that team gets a point. Most points after 15 routines wins.
Some of the girls from my daughter’s dance academy were members of the cheerleading team for Washington State University and competed in the National Championship.
These are girls who were trained in all sorts of dance (lyrical, hip hop, ballet, tumbling, tap, and so on) and that served them well as cheerleaders afterward.
I watched the clip on this page and immediately recognize one of the dancers, I’ve seen her on stage many times at showcases from my daughter’s dance academy.
They only came in 9th place, but still, being one of the top ten in the country isn’t that bad.
Clarification on #1…I dimly remember the NCAA issuing some kind of ruling way back about how competitive cheerleading was no longer a sanctioned sport under their banner (or something) and the College Cheerleading Championship, once a flagship event on ESPN, had been axed. Again, this is the first televised cheerleading competition I’ve seen in years, and this is a channel that now runs stuff like axe throwing and cornhole. But there’s never been a gap in the signature event, it just changed hands.
And as for what drives young athletes, and in particular a lot of young women, into it is mainly a matter of prestige. Things like gymnastics and figure skating also require plenty of highly specialized skills and carry a risk of serious injury, but these are big, time-honored sports with plenty of big names. Nobody seems to be a big name in cheerleading; heck, ESPN didn’t even bother to give the names of the competitors.
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