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Cheerleading
is a sport that uses organized routines made from elements of some tumbling,
dance, jumps and stunting to direct the event's spectators to cheer on sports
teams at games and matches and/or compete at cheerleading competitions. The
athlete involved is called a cheerleader. With an estimated 1.5 million participants
in allstar cheerleading (not including the millions more in high school, college
or little league participants) in the United States alone, cheerleading is,
according to Newsweek's Arian Campo-Flores, "the most quintessential of
American sports."
Due in part to this recent exposure, there are now an estimated 100,000
participants scattered around the rest of the world in countries including Australia,
China, Colombia, France, Germany, Japan,[5] the Netherlands, New Zealand and
the United Kingdom.Cheerleading is
now the new sport with the most injuries, outside of contact football. Dangerous
stunts are the main cause of this because the competition has signifigantly
increased and teams strive for the harder, more difficult stunts to be pulled
off.
Due to this recent exposure, there are now an estimated 100,000 participants
scattered around the rest of the world in countries including Australia, China,
Colombia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United
Kingdom.In the 1960's
National Football League (NFL) teams began to organize professional cheerleading teams. The Baltimore Colts (now the Indianapolis Colts) was the first NFL team to have an organized cheerleading squad. It was the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders who gained the spotlight with their revealing outfits and sophisticated dance moves, which debuted in the 1972-1973 season, but were first seen widely in Super Bowl X.
March 14, 2008 12:19 PM
