Cheerleading is a hobby that many teens and young boys and girls participate in. Almost 400,000 individuals are involved in high school cheerleading in the United States.

According to Varsity.com, the first known cheer was in 1898 when a a medical student named Johnny Campbell got a group of people to hype up the crowd at a college football game. Before 1923, woman weren’t allowed to cheer–cheerleading was originally a male activity. However, during the 1940s, college aged males went to fight in World War II and women took over.

Lawrence “Herkie” Herkimer  held the first summer cheerleading clinic at Sam Houston State Teacher’s College, where he developed the famous “Herkie” jump, in which one leg is straight in front and one leg is bent behind, almost like a check mark. The spirit stick and the pom pom were also developed at the clinic, both of which are cheerleading staples to this day. In 1961 Herkimer founded the National Cheerleaders Association.The earliest cheerleading competitions began in the 1960s. Throughout the years cheerleading became more complex, incorporating stunts and tumbling. It was first televised in 1978 by CBS during the Collegiate Cheerleading Championships. In 1983 ESPN broadcast the National High School Cheerleading Competition nationwide.

Whether cheerleading is a sport or not has been an ongoing debate. Some believe that sideline cheering shouldn’t be counted as a sport, but competition cheering is more sports-like. According to Merriam Webster, the definition of sport is “a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other.” Competition cheering meets the definition, but sideline cheering not so much. A lot of people have reserved thoughts on if the definition is really enough to consider Cheerleading a sport, comparing it to dance. After running a poll on my Raider Review twitter page, @RaiderZsyrii, my final results were that out of the 377 people that voted, 71% said, “Yes cheerleading is a sport” and 29% said, “No cheerleading isn’t a sport.”