You May Have Spirit, But it’s Still Not a Sport

How does one weigh the value of one sport over another? When is one sport more important than another? All over the United States, schools of all sizes and academic standing are asking these questions because of the financial hits they are taking on a personal and state level. Budget cuts in all of these schools are shaving away at the miniature expenses that are using all of those extra pennies.

Our very own university has been faced with these questions on an extreme level. Quinnipiac had been sued by the university's girl's volleyball team for cutting the team for budget reasons and replacing it with competitive cheerleading. The district court had ruled in favor of the volleyball team and agreed that cheerleading would not be honored as a sport in the state of Connecticut. If cheerleading is not a sport, then what is?

To look at what a sport really is, we need to look at the bare bones of what every sport has in common. According to the NCAA Title IX, all college sports must have coaches, practices and competitions during a defined season, with a governing organization and competition as its primary goal. Now that is a great definition, but it is a very broad one. This rule could cover sports as intense as hockey to hobbies such as chess. Why not cheerleading? Because of the many flaws of NCAA Title IX we need to look at the athleticism and training it takes to participate in the sport.

Many people define a sport as an activity that necessitates a ball or an event where the participants acquire points. Athletic value is the true measurement of a sport. Anyone can be good at a sport naturally, but it takes a true athlete to perfect a sport. I would consider both volleyball and cheerleading sports due to the amount of athletic value in each. They are two activities that require great strength, speed and precision. These qualities are the perfect formula for an athlete. The last time I checked, athletes played sports. Therefore both volleyball and cheerleading should be recognized as a sport. So why is volleyball recognized, but not cheerleading?

Only about 20 states in the U.S. view cheerleading as a sport. A factor with this statistic also has to do with NCAA Title IX. Title IX requires equal opportunities for men and women in both education and sports. This means that for every sport, there must be an equal sport that the opposite sex is able to participate in. Cheerleading, being a primarily female sport, does not exactly have an equal sport for males to participate in. Many schools have found that football is the solution to their problem. The only problem is, not all schools have a football team, Quinnipiac being one of them. Colleges and universities in the northeast and out west may care more about hockey or basketball than football and both hockey and basketball have equivalent female sports to satisfy NCAA Title IX. Colleges and universities also may not have a high enough demand for other primarily male sports, such as wrestling. It all varies between each school and state.

Many schools, such as Quinnipiac, continue the fight to have sports like cheerleading honored in their school. Quinnipiac is one of the many schools that have started to introduce specific governing bodies necessary to suffice the rules and regulations of the NCAA. We live in a time when males and females can compete in equivalent, gender-specific sports on equal levels, but we also live in a time where males and females compete in very different sports on different levels. We need to recognize both of these worlds. NCAA Title IX obviously only recognizes a similar world in order to honor equal opportunity for both sexes. Title IX must be mended to recognize our not so equal world.

This column originally appeared in the July 28 edition of The Hammonton Gazette.