After reading that headline, you probably thought to yourself, “I’m pretty sure I know the answers to that question.”
For the most part, I feel the same way. But in my experiences, I’ve noticed that this is actually a big topic for debate. Once you go outside the spectrum of the games and competitions that everyone considers to be sports — football, baseball, etc. — it’s a free-for-all.
When I interviewed Plant City Dolphins cheerleading coach Robin Bailey and trainer Kelsey Howard last week, they brought up the varsity team’s training regimen and stated that cheerleading, despite what some people think, is definitely a sport. In fact, they feel so strongly about this that they even had it printed on their TCYFCC championship t-shirts.
On the other hand, many people would argue against cheerleading’s status as a sport. Try asking that question in Google’s search bar. You’ll get about 14,700,000 results in 0.44 seconds and plenty of opinions on both sides from big names like USA Today, ESPN and more. Perhaps most surprisingly, in an espnW.com article that ran this past July: Ex-college cheerleader Alyssa Roenigk argued that cheerleading is not a sport.
Roenigk is entitled to her own opinion, as are the Dolphins coaches with their own opinions, and you with yours.
I believe that anything that involves regular competitions and plenty of physical effort is a sport, so I will make room for cheerleading in my Sports section whenever I have a good story.
I used to think that it wasn’t a sport, but that was before I knew that there was more to it than just watching the girls recite memorized chants and shake their pom-poms at the high school sporting events I went to. Not all cheer squads go beyond that, but the ones that do cheer competitively are playing a sport.
What’s the fundamental difference between a cheer competition and something like gymnastics? Athletes are training to be able to do something specific, nail the routine in front of judges and compete against others for the highest score. The only difference would be that gymnasts aren’t exactly working on team-oriented routines. Still, they’re competing in the Olympics, and no one doesn’t consider that to be a sport. Maybe synchronized swimming is a closer comparison.
Wait, that’s in the Olympics, too.
So are sports such as archery, curling and shooting. Or, I guess I’m calling those “sports” because the official Olympics website says so. Baseball and softball? Those real sports are still left holding out hope for Tokyo 2020.
I respect anyone who can shoot a bow, fire a pistol or curl with Olympian skill. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to call those activities “sports.” Contests of skill, though? Sure.
Of course, there are some gray areas that I’ve had to make judgment calls on in the past.
I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on animal competitions like equestrian eventing, but they’re popular enough around these parts that a story would probably end up in my section.
I did a story on baton twirlers last year and, when it was first assigned to me, our editorial staff held a vote to determine what section of the paper it belonged in. The majority voted for Sports, and I learned at the interviews and photoshoot that it was the right vote.
Although the competitions are broadcast on sports networks, I don’t consider poker or spelling to be sports. Sure, they make compelling TV, but they’re more out of place in than Michael Jordan was in professional baseball.
It would be nice if we could all agree on what is and is not really a sport, but I doubt we’ll ever reach that point. At least the debates can be fun.