In 2012, a federal judge ruled that cheer didn’t qualify as a sport as far as Title IX compliance was concerned. The judge specifically called out the “strength, agility, and grace” cheerleaders possessed, but the lack of a governing body, post-season rules, a regular season, and the fact that the primary purpose of cheer is not competition meant that it wasn’t a sport.
I’m not going to quibble over what is and isn’t a sport, it’s not like Title IX compliance is the only standard we need to use. The American Medical Association endorsed making cheer a sport. Not because they’re fans, but because they’re concerned about the large number of injuries, many of them catastrophic, cheerleaders suffer each year. They feel that being a sport they’d have a governing body that would institute rules making it safer for kids. So your friend was right, cheer is pretty darned dangerous.
Even if it’s not competitive, if the performance is supposed to be synchronized, then someone out of sync makes the performance look worse. In a case like this, everyone understands and is likely supportive. But if it’s just people who aren’t up to the level that the performance requires because they don’t have the ability, then the performance suffers. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone has to be a top performer. If there are performers who have different abilities, the performance can instead be built around the different abilities. So rather than having a performance where all 10 cheerleaders do difficult acrobatics exactly in sync, have a performance where some subset are doing those difficult moves and everyone else is doing something else.
It would probably be better for the students if all athletic activities were no-cut. If you want to be on the team, you’re on the team. Cross country is typically that way. Anyone can be on the cross country team no matter how fast they can run. If you want to be on the cheer squad, you’re on the cheer squad. The same with football, soccer, etc. These activities wouldn’t be at the top level anymore since they wouldn’t be just limited to the top level athletes. But it would be more inclusive and likely healthier for the kids mental well being. Good luck trying to get a change like that implemented in the highly competitive American school sports system!
Don’t look now, but I suspect it is related to our age. I haven’t been a college student, matriculating with potential BMOC since 1972. I know my use of the acronym and concept started about 1968, give or take. So it was a cool, gooey, neato word 50 some years ago.
Between you and me I always liked PE classes more than afterschool sports. It didn’t matter if I could do pullups or catch a baseball. Since I came and participated full on, I was for sure ‘included’ regardless of ability.
Sure, but the OP said the concern was rooted in competitivity. If there’s no competition, no problem, but aren’t there any lines in competition, etc.
What I’m saying is, assuming it is a competitive activity, a pom pommer being lousy at homecoming is about the least competition-affecting issue you could have. It’s like the 14th man/woman on the basketball team tripping on a cord at a pep rally. Pretty easy to draw a line.
Even if it’s non-competitive, the students are still representing the school. If the cheer squad looks terrible, then it reflects poorly on the school. The implication is that the school doesn’t care about excellence. In general, parents want the cheer director to get the best out of the cheer team. So even if the cheer squad is just doing their dance at halftime for fun, the dance should still look good. However, that doesn’t mean that the cheer squad has to perform at the top level with amazing acrobatics. There’s lots of ways to have the group look good even if they aren’t at the 1% ability level.
I don’t think we really need to court the approval of people who would look at the cheer squad of the OP, and say, “Damn, that special needs kid really fucked up our enjoyment of the performance.”
The OP is a special case. I think most people watching are understanding that the special needs student is doing the best they can. But if it was instead kids that were not special needs and were out of sync because they didn’t practice, that would reflect poorly. I agree that if people are griping because a special needs kid stands out from the rest of the team, that’s on them and they need to get over it. The team should “do a good job”. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is doing crazy acrobatics in sync. It means that everyone is working hard and is focused on making the performance as good as they can.
That works with some sports , but not all. You can’t have 50 kids on a baseball team - only nine can play at a time and kids will spend a lot of time being at the field but not playing. Assuming there are enough coaches and fields , you can have multiple teams but that’s a big assumption.
Well, again, not really what my point was, but since you seem to want to have your own opinion examined: I think it’s an expression of a villainous 80s movie school principal’s worldview.
I had one last summer that has been in my head for a year or more.
At the camp I was volunteering at, part of my patrol was a fairly physically disabled girl. We walk a lot at camp. Minimum 20,000 to 25,000 steps a day. These girls carry their backpacks all day long.
This girl was struggling every day with the physical requirements. She wanted me to carry her backpack, but I had my own. When we could, we got a golf cart for her but that just wasn’t always available. She had meltdowns every day and cried every day and was miserable. Yet every day professed the desire to come back.
The other girls were surprisingly patient with her but by the end of the week I could see their patience thinning.
And it’s been on my mind ever since. Of course she should be allowed to be part of it and we should make as many accomodations as possible. But she is also crying and miserable every day. Is camp really the right thing for her?
I still don’t know the right answer. I did the best i could for her. But it clearly wasn’t enough. Also I have had no training in dealing with this kind of child either.
Well, hmm. I have some thoughts about various activities my kids are in.
-My kids are in the community youth orchestra. There are actually three of them; the highest-tier one is quite good (I describe it as “the level where people will actually go to listen to you voluntarily! If you don’t have to pay for tickets, that is.”) and the other two are for lower-level kids. The lowest one is for beginners, but you probably need to know how to at least read music on a beginning level or else it’s not going to be super fun for you. (Every year there are one or two kids who start out and end up giving up. And last year there was one kid whose music reading was not up to par, but his parents worked with him so that he could still play the music.) I don’t think they would be able to include a special-needs kid who couldn’t read music at all, because that kid probably wouldn’t have much fun and having someone playing at the wrong time (for instance) would have an adverse effect on how the group worked together.
Conversely, in the local high schools, I believe there is no restriction on who can join orchestra. And the community orchestra really promotes joining one’s high school orchestra as well.
-I run two “math team” groups at my kids’ school. The lower-grade team (4th-6th grade) goes to a local competition. It is open to anyone who wants to do it but if the spread is too large in either direction I’ve found it’s hard to teach to. It’s still open to anyone, it’s just hard on the coach. I think we could handle a special needs kid as long as the kid wasn’t disruptive to practice, but I wouldn’t know how to coach that kind of spread and the kid would probably not end up learning very much if anything. If everyone’s okay with that, then sure!
The upper-grade team (6th-8th grade) does Mathcounts and yeah, I do restrict who is on this team – not in a competitive kind of way, but in a “you must meet this lower threshold” kind of way. You have to be at a certain math level to be on the team, because we move pretty quickly and the problems aren’t trivial, and I’ve had the issue before where kids didn’t have fun if they didn’t know enough coming in.
So, anyway… I think what i think about the OP is that if the kid in question was disruptive to the group activities of the others, like they were doing a formation and the OP kid was messing up the formation by getting in the way, that would be a problem. Or if it’s an activity that the kid wouldn’t have fun at without having a base level of knowledge or performance ability. But if the kid is having fun doing her own thing, eh, that’s cool.
My older child hates to give up on anything and will stick with something even when it’s clearly making her absolutely miserable. I’ve more than once had to be the bad guy who says to her, “look, this is clearly not working for you, you have to stop.” I wonder if this is simply something that she needed to work out with your parents and maybe the camp director – the decision of whether camp was the right thing for her was clearly above what you, as a patrol volunteer, should have been expected to handle!
See here if interested: