Cheerleading: what began several years ago as a way of cheering on your own sports team has now become a sport in its own right with a variety of categories and competitions.
In this article, we give you a comprehensive overview of cheer sports.
Cheerleading – as we know it today – combines entertainment, acrobatics and dance. But that wasn’t always the case.
It originated in the USA at the end of the 19th century, when fans supported their team for the first time with organized cheers.
The story says that in 1889, Johnny Campbell shouted one battle cry after another until others in the audience joined in and so the University of Minnesota football team won. A short time later, Campbell founded a group of six men who wanted to encourage the audience to cheer regularly in future. With the so-called “yell captains”, the world’s first cheer team was born.
Over time, cheerleading developed into a competitive sport with a focus on athleticism and show elements.
There are now a number of different forms, categories and specialties in cheer sports. High school cheerleading, for example, is very different from the sport in collage. However, cheerleading can be roughly categorized into two main forms:
Cheerleading consists of various elements, some of which are also types of sport. The main components include:
Teams in cheerleading are usually organized according to age groups and team sizes.
A form of cheer sport that focuses on dance styles such as jazz, hip-hop and pom. The focus here is on rhythm and synchronicity, while acrobatic elements play a lesser role than in cheerleading.
The competitive nature of cheerleading makes it particularly exciting. One after the other, the teams present a choreography consisting of stunts, tumbling, dances and pyramids, which has to show off the team’s entire range of skills within 2:30 minutes. This choreography is then judged by a jury according to set criteria.
When evaluating a coreography, the following things are important:
Mistakes such as wobbly stunts, unclean landings or asynchrony lead to points being deducted.
In Germany, cheerleading developed relatively late: the first German team, the Pantherettes, was not formed until 1980. However, there are now regional championships, national championships and international competitions here too. You can find some national championships that you can attend in our sports calendar.
For some years now, there have been efforts to establish cheerleading as an Olympic discipline. The international association ICU is working on making the sport better known worldwide and creating uniform rules. In Germany, the Cheerleading und Cheerdance Verband Deutschland (CCVD) as the most important association that sets standards and organizes competitions. However, there are also other major associations.
