When someone says cheerleading, what do you think about? Most people think of cheerleading as just pom poms, bows and standing at the sideline during a football game. Although that is an aspect of cheerleading, there is a much more competitive side of it. 

Dictionary.com states that a sport is “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature…” Competition cheer fits this definition. Whether the team is competing for high school, college or Allstar. When cheering competitively, teams have a certain skill level, which they must execute during their routine. 

As a cheerleader for our school’s sideline and competition team, I am able to see the distinction between the two. Sideline cheer is a lot of fun and school spirit with minimal practices. When it comes around competition season, our team is only focused towards one thing and that is winning. We as a team put in many hours and hard work during practices up until the competition. 

Just like other sports, when we are preparing for competition season, many athletes end up getting injured. This tends to happen to cheerleaders when they throw, catch, spin and flip.  Our team as a whole conditions so that we can practice and perform to our best abilities.
In January of 2020, Netflix released a docuseries called Cheer. This series is based off a junior college team, Navarro, from Texas that has won many national championships. Throughout this show, you can clearly see all of the hard work, and effort that goes into this sport. 

Although I have not been cheering competitively for a while, I have still gotten the experience of early morning practices, day long practices, conditioning, tough losses, and long commitment, that is all worth it in the end.