I Wish Some People Would Stop Referring To It as a Sport

Here we go again! 

In an effort to trim their 2012 school tax budgets, some athletic directors in some Long Island school districts are looking to cut certain group activities such as cheerleading. This has many parents in an uproar shouting the Nancy Kerrigan mantra of  “Why, why, why me?” Leaders of these groups are chanting, “Why don’t they eliminate some other sport?” Some OTHER sport? Maybe because cheerleading is steal a sport in the first place. It is a strenuous group activity like Steal The Bacon at best.

At the N.Y.S. A.P.H.E.R.D. (New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance) convention a few months ago at Turning Stone Resort and Casino, many of the attendees responded to this with empathetic shock and horror.

One educator was quoted as saying, “This government is worried about childhood obesity. It wants to mandate Physical Education hours. Now because of federal and state budget cuts to schools, they are forced to do something like this. They want us P.E. professionals to figure out ways to incorporate martial arts, weight training, Tai Chi, Hip Hop and floor gymnastics into class settings. It hurts our children to take any recreational activity away.”  

Another attendee responded with angry looks and commented at reporters saying, “That’s not right! Do you know how hard those girls work?"

Yes, these participants work hard. Five days a week, for at least three hours each day, they can practice stunting (two or three girls throwing another member of the squad into the air and then performing a flip), dance routines, gymnastics and long bendy stretches. Most basketball, football and baseball teams do not put nearly as much time into their daily practices as the others do. It may seem like wiggling and booty bumps with pom-poms, but it is so much more. Still it’s not a sport as an official court ruling decided and the cuts were necessary. Cooler heads chose to eliminate athletic endeavors instead.

As to the comment about the football team and baseball teams not practicing as hard as the cheerleaders — so what? I practiced playing the guitar a lot…that does not make music a sport. If by practicing or playing something a lot, it would make what you are practicing a sport, I would have been captain of the Baseball Card Flipping Team in 1968.

Some kids are practicing their Call of Duty video game six days a week for at least four hours each day and they should stop immediately. They should go out for a sport, fight obesity and then do their homework, because playing competitive video games is not a sport either. I once wrote, “Jumping, running, tumbling and yelling is what you also do if your pants are on fire, but that does not make it a sport either.” And it still holds true.

Don’t give me this “it’s difficult” and “we work hard” rhetoric. Heart surgery is difficult, but it’s not a sport. Automotive mechanics work hard. Fact — it is NOT a sport when you change someone’s oil!

You might ask, “What makes a Sport a sport?” Now it is my official collective view that a Sport requires two or more people on a side playing simultaneously, a ball or likeness and running or a short distance sprint (not a walk, jog or a leap). That is all!  

I am sorry that cheerleading or cheer-tastics or spirit groups have lost their funding…so did the Piano in the Marching Band from what I heard. I just think it is high time that these outraged parents, bus themselves and their sparkly pom-poms in large groups to the steps of Congress and yell, “Gimme a dolla, gimme another dolla and still another dolla” and see what happens.