cheerleading, team activity in which elements of dance and acrobatics are combined with shouted slogans in order to entertain spectators 😆 at sporting events and to encourage louder and more enthusiastic cheering.
Once exclusively a sideline activity geared toward supporting school sports, 😆 cheerleading has gained recognition as a sport in its own right and often operates outside the school context altogether.
Cheerleading has 😆 long been considered an iconic American activity symbolizing school spirit, leadership, youthfulness, and sex appeal.
The southern United States (including Texas) 😆 is usually considered the heart of modern cheerleading, although the activity is well established throughout the United States as well 😆 as abroad, having gained a foothold in countries around the world.
History of cheerleading Although cheerleading is today predominantly associated with 😆 femininity, the original cheerleaders were men.
Cheerleading was connected to the emergence of gridiron football at Ivy League colleges and universities 😆 in the United States in the mid-1800s, and the growth and formalization of cheerleading paralleled that of football.
Over the latter 😆 half of the 19th century, as attendance at college games grew, large stadiums were constructed, and spectators were distanced from 😆 the playing field.
Cheerleaders-or "yell leaders," as they were then called-led cheers from the sidelines both to encourage the spectators and 😆 to serve as a form of crowd control.
By the 1920s cheerleading had become a formal extracurricular activity for boys in 😆 high schools, colleges, and communities across the country, related to but distinct from other spirit programs such as marching bands, 😆 drum corps, and drill teams.
As ambassadors for their schools and communities, cheerleaders were associated with such character-building traits as discipline, 😆 cooperation, leadership, and sportsmanship.
Britannica Quiz American Sports Nicknames Women and people of colour were excluded from the private all-male schools 😆 where collegiate sports and cheerleading first developed, but many state-supported institutions began to admit women at the turn of the 😆 century, opening the way for their participation in sporting events.
Women began joining cheer squads during the 1920s and '30s as 😆 collegiate sports proliferated and men and women began socializing more in public.
A separate cheerleading tradition evolved within black educational institutions 😆 during the same period, with a similar emphasis on character building and leadership.
Overall, however, cheerleading remained an overwhelmingly white enterprise, 😆 and evidence suggests that it became even "whiter" after desegregation, because the total number of black schools diminished and black 😆 students were rarely elected as cheerleaders in the newly integrated, predominantly white schools.
It was not until the 1960s and '70s, 😆 well after scholastic athletic programs had diversified, that cheer squads began to reflect the ethnic and racial composition of schools.
That 😆 shift was in part the result of protest activity on the part of black and Latino students.
The mobilization of college-age 😆 men during World War II opened up new opportunities for women in cheerleading and ultimately led to the "feminization" of 😆 cheerleading in the 1960s and '70s, when the proportion of female cheerleaders rose to roughly 95 percent.
Female involvement changed the 😆 nature of cheerleading, spurring greater emphasis on physical attractiveness and sex appeal.
That, in turn, may have led to the trivialization 😆 and devaluation of cheerleading.
Cheerleading experienced a decline in popularity in the late 1970s and '80s, brought on by second-wave feminism, 😆 which challenged traditional ideas about gender roles, and by the passage of Title IX, which guaranteed girls and women equal 😆 access to sports in schools that received U.S.federal funds.
Cheerleading was criticized for its supportive auxiliary function in men's sporting events 😆 and thus was blamed for perpetuating gender inequality.
The introduction of cheerleading squads for professional sports teams, such as the Dallas 😆 Cowboy Cheerleaders and the Laker Girls, fueled criticism, since those squads' performances generally consisted of overtly sexualized dance routines.
The cheerleading 😆 renaissance The decline of cheerleading was short-lived, however, and it soon rebounded to become more popular and more profitable than 😆 ever before.
The reasons for its recovery included the increasingly athletic nature of cheerleading and the adoption of sportlike elements such 😆 as competitions, summer training camps, and rigorous practice schedules.
Most cheerleading squads no longer simply led cheers or danced on the 😆 sidelines.
They also performed jumps and stunts, built pyramids, and executed elaborate tumbling passes, whether at sporting events or in cheerleading 😆 competitions.
Those changes served to make cheerleading more appealing for a generation of girls and women who had more options for 😆 athletic involvement than past ones, and they led to a resurgence of male participation, particularly at the college level.
The introduction 😆 of difficult acrobatics was not without drawbacks, however; studies in the first decade of the 21st century showed that cheerleading 😆 had become the leading cause of catastrophic sports injuries (meaning serious injuries to the brain or spine) to American girls 😆 and women, ahead of gymnastics and track.
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Subscribe Now Although the 😆 notion of competition was not new-interscholastic high-school contests were organized as early as 1944-from the 1990s there was an increasing 😆 emphasis on competition relative to other dimensions of cheerleading.
The rapid rise of all-star cheerleading in the late 1990s was both 😆 a cause and a consequence of that development.
All-star clubs are private for-profit programs where children as young as six years 😆 old receive intensive instruction in cheerleading, including gymnastics.
They compete with other all-star cheer clubs within their own extensive network of 😆 competitions.
As a nonscholastic site for learning cheerleading skills, all-star programs initially served as a training ground for high-school and college 😆 cheer programs but soon became popular in their own right.
The first college cheerleading championship was televised in 1978, with several 😆 more following in the early 1980s.
Since then, cable networks have broadcast a wide range of cheer championships to national and 😆 international audiences, and competitive cheerleading has been the focus of Hollywood films, reality TV shows, and news reports.
None of that 😆 could have happened without the growth and involvement of the modern cheerleading industry.
In all parts of the United States, squads 😆 are affiliated with different cheerleading companies, or associations, which run competitions, summer camps, coaching clinics, safety certification seminars, and their 😆 own product lines for uniforms and apparel.
The "founding father" of that industry, Lawrence Herkimer, was himself a cheerleader at Southern 😆 Methodist University in Dallas.
In 1948 Herkimer started the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA), which is headquartered in Dallas, and the younger 😆 but larger Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) is based in Memphis.
