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Cheerleading "Sport or Not"

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Submitted By amandajo1003
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We’ve Got Spirit, Yes We Do! When people hear the term “Cheerleading” they think of preppy girls from the movies, wearing short skirts and being somewhat unintelligent. Research shows that this is simply not the case. Cheerleaders have been around since the 1890s. Some of our most famous presidents have stood on the sidelines, cheering their teams to victory. Franklin D. Roosevelt cheered at Harvard. Ronald Regan cheered for the basketball team at Eureka Collage, and even both Bushes cheered at Yale and Andover (Graff 526). Through the years, the sport of cheerleading has evolved, yet the majority of people still do not consider cheerleading a real sport. In 2010 David Whitley published an article in aolnews.com stating that “Just because you work hard at something or just because there is a risk of injury involved does not make it [cheerleading] a sport.” Although schools and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) do not consider cheerleaders as athletes, they make them abide by the same rules and safety guidelines of all other recognized sports (historyofcheerleading.com). Cheerleaders have some of the same concepts of gymnastics, and gymnastics is considered a sport. The perceptions of Whitley and the NCAA as well as many others are reasonable to some; however, it is my belief that cheerleading is a real sport. Cheerleading like any other sport requires an enormous amount of strength and agility, grueling hours of practice, and extreme dedication. Cheerleaders attend camps, risk injury, and face competition. A thesis statement should be the last sentence in your first paragraph and should tell what your essay is about AND the point of the essay. This sentence is not doing that. According to dictionary.com the word “sport” is defined as “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.” A

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