College Cheerleading Coach Agrees: It’s ‘Not a Sport’ … Yet

ABC News on Campus reporters Marlei Martinez, Miriam Smith, and Danielle Waugh blog:
 
Cheerleaders across the nation haven’t felt especially peppy since federal judge Stefan Underhill ruled last week that cheerleading is “still too underdeveloped and disorganized” to be considered a varsity sport. It all started when the Quinnipiac University’s women’s volleyball team sued the school for pulling its funding and re-routing it to the cheerleading squad. They claimed the transaction had violated Title IX, the legislation that requires men and women’s athletic programs to receive equal funding. But one cheer coach is standing up for the court’s decision. Dena Segbers, who has led the Syracuse University Spirit Program for nearly eight years, and has been coaching cheerleading for 25 years, said technicalities disqualify cheerleading as a competitive collegiate sport.
 
“Under the definition of Title IX and NCAA, [cheerleading] truly is not a sport on the collegiate level,” Segbers told ABCNews.com.  “All true sports need to have a set of contests. And on the collegiate level, we do not have a true set of annual contests.”
 
Although the United Cheerleading Association (UCA) hosts the annual 'College Cheerleading National Championships,’ the UCA Championship gives universities the authority to choose whether or not they will compete — unlike the NCAA basketball playoffs. Segbers said her squad has competed in the Championships for the past eight years in a row, however, competition is not their focus. 
 
“Our primary purpose is to support the athletic teams that we are assigned to through the athletic department,” she said. “And I would like it to continue to be that.”
  
Most of the college cheerleaders we spoke with adamantly disagreed with the court’s ruling. Samantha Lavien, 21, a senior broadcast journalism major at Syracuse University, has been cheering for SU since her freshman year.
 
“I disagree with the decision a lot,” Lavien said. “I think cheerleading is a sport and by calling it not a sport it really undermines athletes on the field.”
 
Lavien has played a number of other sports in the past, including softball and basketball. She says cheerleading requires just as much effort.
 
“I try just as hard in cheerleading as I did in anything else,” Lavien said. “We have a lot of practices, we go to competition, we prepare for competition, we prepare for games, so I think that we deserve the same respect as any other athlete.”
 
Many college cheerleaders, Segbers’ squad included, perform stunts and gymnastics in addition to sideline cheering. Liza Boyer, 24, who cheered at Louisiana State University for four years and now teaches cheerleading at St. Ann’s Elementary School in Germantown, Tenn.  said, “It requires an extreme amount of athleticism to do the gymnastics we perform, and every athlete that attempts to do it would definitely agree. The amount of time we put in to practicing and working out is equivalent to any other sport.”  Eighteen-year-old Caroline Babb, who cheered competitively throughout high school, agrees with Boyer. She will be joining the University of Texas at Austin cheering squad this year.
 
“I think the judge is making too much of a generalization for sure by saying that cheer isn’t a sport because there are lots of different kinds of cheerleading,” Babb said.
 
But cartwheels, basket-tosses and double back-hand-springs are what Segbers says will one day be cheerleading’s saving grace.
 
“I do think that when cheerleading does become a sport, I know it will, there will be competitive cheer teams that will probably be named something else,” she said. “Probably ‘competitive stunts and gymnastics,’ which [are] the true athletic elements to cheerleading.”
 
Judge Underhill hasn’t completely ruled out this possibility. In his decision he wrote, “Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX.” Modern-day cheerleaders may take on many roles, Segbers said, such as motivating their fellow athletes, engaging the crowd and creating the atmosphere for the home court advantage. In her view, these encouraging services alone aren’t enough to deem cheerleading a sport.
 
“Cheerleading is just that, leading cheers,” she said. “If the girls are doing dances on the sidelines or they’re holding a sign trying to get a crowd response that technically wouldn’t be considered athleticism.”