Cheerleading

Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to entertain the audience, or for competition. Cheerleading routines typically range anywhere from one to three minutes, and contain components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting. Having originated in the United States, cheerleading has a great tradition in this country. In the rest of the world there is little practice of cheerleading, except in some countries with the influence of American sports or with cheerleading contests sponsored by private brands.

This article is about American-style cheerleading. For Japanese-style cheerleading, see Ōendan.
"Cheerleader" redirects here. For other uses, see Cheerleader (disambiguation).

College cheerleaders performing a liberty stunt
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders perform on the flight deck for the crew of USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) during the recording of the Fox NFL Pregame Show.

Modern cheerleading is very closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as association football (soccer), ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling will sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. The Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have a cheerleading team.

Cheerleading originated as an all-male activity in the United States, and remains predominantly in America, with an estimated 3.85 million participants as of 2017. The global presentation of cheerleading was led by the 1997 broadcast of ESPN's International cheerleading competition, and the worldwide release of the 2000 film Bring It On. The International Cheer Union (ICU) now claims 116 member nations with an estimated 7.5 million participants worldwide.

Around the end of the 2000s the sport has gained traction outside of the United States in countries like Australia, Canada, Mexico, China, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, however, despite this, the sport does not have the international popularity of other American sports, such as baseball or basketball, despite efforts being made to popularize the sport at an international level. In 2016, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) recognized the ICU (International Cheer Union) as part of the sports federations, in practice this means that the modality is considered a sport by the IOC and in the future, depending on negotiations and international popularization, it could even be part of the Olympic Games.

Cheerleading carries the highest rate of catastrophic injuries to female athletes in sports, with most injuries associated with stunting, also known as pyramids.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.