ion to the people of Minnesota in regard to University enthusiasm.”
Minnesota won the game 17-6 and cheerleading was born.
Over the next hundred years cheerleading began to shape into what it is today. At first cheerleading was dominated by males, but the University of Minnesota was once again the pioneer, rolling out the first female cheerleaders in 1923. In the 1940s, World War II gave women the opportunity to become the primary participants with the nation’s men at war. Today 90 percent of cheerleaders are female.
By the 1970s the skills used in cheerleading spiked with the introduction of partner stunts and things such as pyramids as well as tumbling. And in 1975 the first cheerleading routine (with music) was demonstrated at a cheer camp at the University of Memphis.
Cheerleading kept growing and growing, reaching an international level from Japan to the United Kingdom; the first World Cheerleading Championship were held in 2004. From a couple of young men trying to snap a losing streak, more than a century later cheerleading was now a global phenomenon.
On Oct. 7, a new step for cheerleading emerged when California announced that Bill No. 949 had been signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, putting cheerleading on the path to becoming a sport on the same level of basketball or baseball in California by 2017.
Something brand new
There are a couple of problems for cheerleading in the “Is it a sport?” debate, starting with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that dictates equal opportunities for men and women in athletics.
In 2010 a federal judge ruled that competitive cheer is not an official sport that could be used by colleges to meet Title IX’s gender-equity regulations. That decision was upheld in 2012 in a federal appeals court. And while the court agreed that the elements of cheerleading required athleticism found in the sport, it just didn’t have enough structure yet.
“Like the district court, we acknowledge record evidence showing that competitive cheerleading can be physically challenging, requiring competitors to possess ‘strength, agility, and grace,’” the court wrote at the time. “Similarly, we do not foreclose the possibility that the activity, with better organization and defined rules, might someday warrant recognition as a varsity sport. But, like the district court, we conclude that the record evidence shows that ‘that time has not yet arrived.’”
For CIF and the state, one of the biggest steps moving forward now is getting compliance for cheerleading within the boundaries of Title IX.
“One of the major goals in this process will be to develop guidelines for competitive cheer programs that our member schools can implement, meet the standards and be compliant with Title IX as defined by the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights,” wrote the CIF’s Executive Director Roger Blake in a statement.
Another big fight for cheerleading has been a slanted view of cheerleading. What’s the initial perception of cheerleading? Probably the image of cheerleaders on the under Friday night lights across the U.S or cheerleaders at professional sporting events. That is not a sport and no one would argue that it is.
What is a sport is competitive cheer, a collection of teams performing highly skilled routines in roughly two-and-a-half minute increments and receiving scores by a panel of judges. Theses competitions are plentiful across the country among both school-based teams and all-star teams, cheerleading groups not affiliated with a school, essentially a club team.
But what Bill 949 has outlined to be rolled out in 2017 is not this. In Section 1, Article (b), Bill 949 describes sport cheerleading as follows:
“For the purposes of this section, ‘competition cheer’ means a sport in which teams participate in direct, head-to-head competition with one another using an objective scoring system.”
Competitive cheer is not done on a head-to-head basis and uses a subjective scoring system.
“That’s not what we have as what we have right now,” says Lauren Hysen the well-regarded cheer coach at Yucaipa High School. “We have