Ridger Sports | Is cheerleading a sport?

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

In a ruling that may eventually reverberate from coast to coast concerning the status of cheerleading as a sport in America, a federal judge in Connecticut has ruled that cheerleading is not an official sport. At least not when schools are trying to figure their adherence to Title IX provisions, a federal law that weighs mightily when schools go about organizing sporting programs for their students.

It seems that Quinnipiac University in Connecticut had decided to drop women’s volleyball. Since just dropping the sport would violate Title IX in that Quinnipiac University women would have less opportunity for athletics, the school decided to replace it with competitive cheerleading. The school already had cheerleading,but the school was going to have its cheerleaders start entering cheerleader competitions in order to keep the school compliant with federal regulations concerning the number of sports that it offered to women.

Not so fast, said U.S.

District Judge Stefan Underhill.

“Competitive cheer may, sometime in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX,” Underhill wrote in a press release, “but today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”

Underhill then ordered the school to re-institute volleyball within 60 days.

The way Title IX reads lends some support for Underhill’s interpretation.

First of all, Title IX criteria requires that for a sport to be an official sport, the activity must have coaches, practices and competitions within a defined season, and it had to have a governing organization.

Secondly, the activity must have competition as its primary goal, not merely the support of other athletic teams. It’s the second part that proves to be the sticking point.

In other words, for cheerleaders to be legit in the federal sense, then they must refrain from - cheerleading? The Arkansas Activities Association just recently declared cheerleading, as well as dance, to be an official sport. This designation was extended, I believe, to give schools some leewayin making their athletic programs federally compliant. However, Judge Underhill seems to be contending that if, for example, cheerleaders lead cheers at school basketball and football games on, let’s say 40-50 dates a year, but only enters cheering competitions once or twice a year, then that particular cheerleading program is not really a sport.

Judge Underhills’ rulinghas kicked up quite a bit of dust on Internet comment boards and the like.

I quickly discovered upon reading a few posts that a lot of people take cheerleading very seriously.

Actually, I might alter that statement to very, very, very seriously.

I suspect that officials at Quinnipiac are trying to finesse the system, and really are trying to limit their committment to women’s athletics. Upon hearing the judges’ ruling, the university said that it would be forced to shut down cheerleading altogether. They also said that they would start a women’s rugby team.

Huh? How would ending cheerleading and starting a whole new sport which they don’t have a program for while at the same time ending a sport which they do have a program somehow be a good thing for the female students at Q.U.? Cost efficient it most likely isn’t.

Unfortunately for the university, the lawsuit turned up other damaging information on the university. It seems that they were using the same women runners who competed in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track to count for three sports. The school was also caught committing numbers fraud. They were counting girls numbers using girls names who weren’t actually on the active rosters while at the same time omitting the names of boys who were playingin the men’s programs.

This accounting sleight of hand made it appear to auditors that the men and women had equal representation on the sporting teams when such was not the case. Their lack of good faith might well have played a part in the judge’s final decision.

At bit further south, Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania has flipped the argument with accusations and lawsuits flying over allegations that the university favors the women over the men. Title IX is again at the heart of the disputes.

At LHU, the athletic director is a woman who before attaining the office of AD was a national championship field hockey coach.

The school has won two national softball titles and five national field hockey championships under her tenure while the mens’football team has not won a game in three years with the men’s basketball team averaging just five wins a year over the last decade.

The women’s programs do get about $200,000 more in support than do the men.

A male coach at LHU won over $100,00 from the school in a discrimination suit but a female coach won $200,000 the school in a different discrimination suit. Five more lawsuits have been filed or are pending at LHU concerning perceived Title IX violations. Clearly, Lock Haven University is the nation’s top ranked litigation school.

Getting back to the cheerleading status, while a federal judge’s court rulings could affect people over the entire nation, it doesn’t have to. The federal court in northern California oftimes has judges there making what I would call, looney decisions. Either the Court of Appeals overturns their verdicts or the rest of the nation just ignores them.

Judge Underhill may be overturned on appeal or perhaps no other circuit pays attention to his findings.

Do I think cheerleading is a sport? The governing body of Arkansas high school athletics says it is, and they are the folks who make that determination.

However, the AAA also sets eligibility requirements but they were thrown out the window last year by a judge in Russellville who didn’t like them, creating a major problemn in last years’ 3A football playoffs. Will cheerleading get shot down by the bench? Who knows?

I watched a little of the Winter Olympics earlier this year and I caught some of the curling matches. If they can call curling a sport, I don’t see how they can deny the same approbation to the fans of cheer. I do oppose schools using cheerleading as a stealth weapon to limit opportunities for women, as it probably the case in Connecticut. Having said that, I also think that any sport or program that develops a student’s pride, dependability, reliability and good health is something we can support, no matter what somebody wants to call it.

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John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The TIMES. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.

Sports, Pages 8 on 07/28/2010