Cheerleading is defined as a sport, involving the performance of organized cheering, chanting, and dancing in support of a sports team at games. Cheer can be for a school or a team outside of school. 

Cheering involves jumping, stunting, tumbling, and performing. Stunning is when a group of usually four people: two bases, a back spot, and a flier, work together to do a stunt. The flyer is standing on the base’s hands and the backspot supports the stunt. While in this position they do flips, spins, switches, and other cool tricks. Jumping is when the team as a whole does synchronized jumps. Toe touches, hurdler, and pike are the most common jumps seen in routines. Tumbling is when a cheerleader does a skill on the floor including round-offs, back handsprings, back tucks, and other skills. All cheer routines also have a cheer, which is when they yell for their team. Pyramid is usually the last aspect of a routine where all of the stunt groups combine and do assisted stunts. Dance is also a big part of cheerleading. Cheer routines, when all of the things listed above are combined to make one big flow of moves, usually last about two minutes and 30 seconds.  

The first known organized cheers and change that began what we know as cheerleading took place at Ivy Leagues college sporting events in the 1860s. Although cheer has been around and stuck around for this long, it was only just recognized as a sport in 2021 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Cheerleading has officially been granted full Olympic status and may make its debut at the Olympic games as soon as Paris 2024. The voting took place at the 138th IOC session held in Tokyo, Japan, and was awarded the International Cheer Union full recognition after a three-year provisional status period. 

This being put into action, cheer could be in the Olympics as early as 2024 which has not been decided yet for sure. It’s most likely that cheer will be in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The hope of this is that cheerleading’s new status will help support cheer programs all over the world to grow and thrive. In their press release, Karl Olson, International Cheer Union’s Secretary General said today, “We’re truly honored as this represents an important opportunity to continue working to evolve cheerleading on a global scale.” 

Cheerleaders all over the world are ecstatic about this recognition that they have worked so hard and long to achieve. The dedication cheerleaders have shown to their sport has paid off.