My wife is a pen clicker. Give her a writing instrument with a clicky top and she’ll proceed to hammer away like a madwoman possessed to find out how many clicks it takes to break a pen’s soul.
It grinds my gears.
If she attains a clicky pen in my presence, I do my very best to steal it faster than Kobe can shriek “Ow!” after snapping his Achilles (totally not D’Antoni’s fault, by the way).
When she does something that’s a pet peeve of mine, I take it away from her, in essence, treating my beautiful, smart wife like a 3-year-old. That’s my solution to a problem.
It really grinds her gears.
Solving issues with that kind of methodology might work for domestic home disputes (of a benign nature), but, generally, treating adults like adults is the smartest, least-resistant route when solving a problem.
So here’s a real-world quandary: Is cheerleading a sport?
Type “Is c” into Google and, in all of its suggestive powers, the search engine guesses what you’d like to know ...
“Is coffee bad for you?”
(I’ve verified. It’s not.)
“Is college worth it?”
(Yep.)
“Is coup contagious?”
(I’m far, far too terrified to even Google, “What is coup?”)
The fourth option: "Is cheerleading a sport?”
Yes and no. When cheerleaders are hanging out on a sideline waving glittery pom-poms, smiling and leading cheers, it’s not a sport. Obvious, right?
But there’s this other thing that falls under the umbrella of cheerleading — competitive cheer, which, my friends, is most definitely a sport.
Idaho hosted a dance and cheer state championship last month (Highland won the cheer competition), and that’s a great thing. It means that cheering competitions in this state fall under the National Federation of State High School Associations’ regulations.
Why is that important?
Cheerleading — once an activity where young girls gathered to, yep, you guessed it, lead cheers — has developed so far beyond the simple definition of “an enthusiastic and vocal supporter” that comparing it to what cheerleaders do today is like assuming the landline phone at all resembles a smartphone.
There were approximately 600,000 cheerleaders six years and older in 1990. That number skyrocketed to 3.6 million by 2003.
While cheerleading has grown in popularity, so have the number of injuries. In 1980, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission reported 4,954 emergency room visits for cheerleaders.
Seventeen years later, it’s 26,786. According to a November 2012 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, “The overall risk of injury is lower in cheerleading than in most other sports, the risk of direct catastrophic injury is considerably higher.”
Since cheerleading can lead to lacerated spleens, fractured vertebrae, mangled ankles and concussions, there are those who prefer we never call it a sport. By their estimation, we’d eliminate state cheer competitions and anything else more aggressive than, “Go! Fight! Win!”
But unlike how I deal with my wife and her zeal for clicking pens, simply taking away what makes cheerleading, cheerleading isn’t the solution.
It’s grown and evolved into the sport it is today because young women want to do more than stand on a sideline.
Are some of the stunts and human pyramids dangerous? Unquestionably.
So is flying in Cessna, eating a cheeseburger in a dirty diner and stepping out one’s own front door.
Instead, IHSAA’s current trend of accepting cheerleading for what it is — a sport — moves us in the right direction, helping ensure cheer competitions are monitored and supervised by qualified and certified coaches.
And the dangerous stunts that generally lead to many of the debilitating injuries are only performed on floors covered with mats. Improve the game, don’t eliminate it.
Don’t take away the pen. Provide one with a cap.
No comments:
Post a Comment