The other athletes on the floor Cheerleading becomes international sport

Now that 97 percent of cheerleaders are female, it is hard to believe that cheerleading started as an all-male sport.

Back in 1898, when cheerleaders were also called the “yell squad” and Johnny Campbell led the first cheer at a Minnesota football game, cheerleading was all about cheering for a football or basketball team from the sidelines. In 2017, it has evolved into a competitive sport that requires those who participate to be athletes and has gained provisional recognition as an Olympic sport.

According to recent statistics from the International Cheer Union, there are 4.5 million registered cheerleaders from 31 countries around the world, and the union itself is made up of more than 100 national federations. When the International Olympic Committee awarded cheerleading $25,000 in funding last year, it acknowledged that it was a sport with growing popularity with a youth focus. Children as young as 5 participate and it has become possible to pursue the sport all the way to university level.

Long past the days of simply cheering and shaking Pom Poms, cheerleaders now perform intricately choreographed routines that are stunt-focussed and include full music sets and gymnastic-style tumbles. There are multiple opportunities throughout the year for cheerleading squads to compete and in the US, there are competitions at the local, regional and national level. The International Cheerleading Association, started in the 1960s, was the first to host a cheerleading competition that pitted top colleges against each other before declaring a winner. Thirty years later, by the 1990s, however, many more competitions had been founded and there were even cheerleading gyms.

Uniforms had made phenomenal strides away from their early beginnings and unlike the ankle-length woolen skirts and heavy sweaters worn by female cheerleaders in the 1920s, had adapted themselves for safety and comfort. Sweaters are now lighter and skirts are no longer than 12 to 14 inches. The saddle shoes that were popular in the 1950s have given way to sneakers, which allow for the more challenging athletic routines now associated with the sport.

Cheerleading’s increasing complexity has also made it more dangerous as a sport, and in 2011, the University of North Carolina’s National Centre for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research said that cheerleading accounts for more than 65 percent of catastrophic injuries in youth sports. Only two deaths were reported between 1982 and 2006, however, with the most common injury being a broken arm.