Orange Glen High School’s fall sports include football, cross country, girls golf, tennis, and volleyball, and now cheer leading.
Thanks to the new athletic director Jason Patterson, cheer leading is now considered a legitimate sport, just like one would consider football or basketball to be a sport.
“We’re just hoping now that we are a sport, that we get more support from the school and from other athletic teams. We go to big football games, big basketball games, and big soccer games, so we are hoping that we can get more people at our competitions,” said Cheer Adviser Lisa Lyon.
The reason for the change?
“[Cheer leaders] work so dang hard, it’s all under the same umbrella. We all have the same goal,” said Patterson.
There are still many people who don’t believe cheer leading is a sport, but according to the California Education code, it is. Cheer surpasses the number of required minutes, along with meeting six of the eight core studies.
The only ones they do not meet are aquatics and combatics, which most sports don’t, and they are still considered a sport.
Senior and Varsity cheer leader Alicia Moya said, “for the people who don’t think cheer is a sport, they should know how hard we work. People think that we just look pretty in our uniforms, but we work hard in the sun and condition and stunt.”
Stunting is one of the most physical parts of cheer. Two bases, a back spot, and sometimes a front spot lift up a flyer, most of the time well above their heads. Bases and back spots have to have the strength to lift a flyer, who weighs anywhere from 80 to 130 pounds, while the flyers have to learn how to balance their own weight while standing on someone’s hands.
“[Stunting] is one of the scariest things... it’s all about technique, you have to have everything right, otherwise it won’t go up and someone could get hurt,” says senior Varsity cheer leader Brooklyn Krein, who knows from experience.
She currently has an injured soldier, and the muscles in her shoulder have all frozen up. She received both of these injuries from stunting.
“I would like to see the football players do the workouts we do, and make them look as pretty as we do. Our workouts are bomb. Cheer leading is just as much of a sport as anything else,” said sophomore and JV cheer leader Abbi Nulty.
If cheer leaders can lift 100 pound girls in the air, do jumps, and hold their arms in the air for 10 minutes at a time, they definitely deserve to be considered a sport. All of the hard work that the cheerleaders put in to to support other athletes should be recognized!