Email: Understanding the Whole Business of Cheerleading

Mar 25, 2013

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Spirit S We received this email over the weekend from Jackie. Would anyone like to offer her an intelligent response?

I’m not fully understanding the whole business of cheer-leading. I see that it is real big bucks business for owners of cheer and dance schools and companies who cater to this industry. I don’t understand the draw of its participants as there are no monetary or scholastic benefits other than a jacket or trophy and its non-benefits of injury or death. I don’t understand the parents who support this function–the trips, gas, lodging, practices, competitions and photo packages–win or lose. Who makes up the pricing of the uniforms, competitions, fees and clinics? The last time I checked, most families in the U.S. are a disability away from utter poverty–so why the risk? At least with football and basketball, you get a 4 yr. scholarship to university. But cheer-leading?…parents might as well stand on a street corner with half a year’s income and toss it in the street at oncoming cars at the stop light. The money issue with zero benefit to the parents pocketbook and no funding for post-secondary education to the cheer participant makes this “sport” a topic of great tension and contention especially when the child/participant loves the activity and the parent cannot express any joy due to the financial hardship and strain it causes. I very serious and genuine.

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4 responses to “Email: Understanding the Whole Business of Cheerleading”

David Hanbery

March 25, 2013

At first instinct I wished to explain to you something I learned many years ago. Do not form an opinion without first educating yourself on the subject. However, I am not sure where you come from or what experiences you might have within the spirit industry. Therefore I will do my best to educate you. I do know, from your misinformed and seemingly unintelligent writing, your experiences are very limited within the spirit industry as well as extracurricular activities in general.

First, many colleges and universities offer great scholarships for cheerleading. It helped me to attend undergrad, graduate school, and law school. In fact you can check out sites like http://www.collegecheerguide.com to see just how many collegiate programs exist. I am willing to bet there is one in your back yard that offers something for their collegiate cheerleaders.

Second, you speak of benefits as if they should only be monetary or of other material gain. Obviously you are not a caring parent. Caring parents invest lots of money and time into developing their children into successful and well balanced adults. Cheerleading offers many great lessons for life such as team work and group skills. It also provides amazing confidence and self worth to its many athletes. These very beneficial traits are worth the investment for caring parents as the intelligent ones can see past the trophies and jackets and even the scholarship potential. They realize the investment on a cheerleading team provides much more positive attributes that the participants will posses throughout their lives.

We live in a country where the top threats are health related. We are a nation of unhealthy and sedentary lifestyles. This epidemic has grown to such large proportions government agencies and institutions are urgently trying to find ways to get kids off the couch and active. With physical activity comes risk of injury, but the benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle have shown to mitigate that risk to the overall benefit to one’s health. Cheerleading is a wonderful and healthy exercise for multitudes of children.

Cheerleading, like all physical activities, has been under assault for being dangerous. I have coached thousands of kids in many different sports and have played dozens competitively. From my coaching and participating experience, cheerleading is not a dangerous activity when rules are followed under proper instruction. If you need a list of places that offer this, just visit http://www.usasf.net. They can help you find a great place.

From reading your clip, I deduct that you have had a bad experience with our beloved cheerleading and for that I am sorry. I also agree with you that cheerleading is expensive and is a great investment for most families. It is not well structured at the moment for families that struggle with their mortgages. We have developed an industry that caters to “those that have” much like tennis, golf, and gymnastics. In this area, we need improvement.

That said, my companies offer scholarships for participation, competition, clothing and uniforms, and even for college to my participants and client programs so that any well deserving, hard working child can experience all of the great things cheerleading has to offer. I hope that members of our industry may take that part of your letter to heart and open some doors for more people to join. As for the rest of your inquiry, they can forget it.

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tricial4

March 26, 2013

How about the fact that my daughter loves the SPORT! She conditions and trains as much as any sport I know. She is the only girl in our family and thinks for her teammates (many of whom she has been with for 4-5 yrs) as her family, sisters, best friends.The life lessons she has learned- like working your butt off for something so bad for hours upon hours and wanting it more then anything and then NOT achieving it, accepting “loosing”. And also learning what it means to be a humble, grateful Champion. To win and loose with dignity.

As for the collegiate return- its simply not true and you need to educate yourself on that. HOWEVER- cheerleading scholarships are extremely competitve with how this sport has grown. I can tell you first hand- families dish out many $1000’s of dollars per year from the time their sons are very young to have them play on travel baseball teams and travel tournament expenses, multiple uniforms, $300-500 on a bat…. They dish out TONS of money (I know this first hand) on football camps $600 for a weekend, football combines, college camps, recruiting services and again these scholarships become SOOO competitive today. Many families spend as much or more for 10-12yrs and many of the kids never end up getting the scholarship in the end. Its not , gauranteed, but if you do it all for the love of money, for the scholarship- you will be sadly disappointed. There are scholarships in most any sport, but few people are able to earn them!

Personally, we are not very well off, I work very hard to support my daughters love of the sport and will continue to do so as long as I can and she continues to want to do it. If she is blessed to get a scholarship one day- I consider that a bonus.

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Angela

March 27, 2013

The vast majority of children in any sport will not get a college scholarship or any art such as dance for that matter. Most will not play on an organized team past high school. However, a lot of parents spend money on things that you will not see any financial return on whatsoever.

The thing to remember is children need activities. Activities help w/ social, team, personal, growth. Activities of any type are good for kids and if the kids love it, parents make sacrifices. Cheerleading has different levels as most other things kids do and it’s the parents choice to spend their money as they would like. I agree cheerleading has exploded but so have youth soccer programs and they are not all local rec leagues, there are all levels of travel which costs just as much as all-star cheer.

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J. Conerly

March 27, 2013

To David Hanbery: A truly intelligent and educated person would have been more diplomatic in the delivery of their message. If critical and judgmental are ‘positive attributes’, all of what you’ve said has fallen on deaf ears. I will review the Websites suggested, however, if your companies offer what you state, you have lost a customer as your reply is full of contempt.

To Tricial4: It is great to say ‘collegiate returns’ are aplenty but if examples aren’t provided, this too is tinkling brass. You state that you have benefited or witnessed; please name these sources.

To Angela: Thank you. You were not crass, judgmental or critical. Agreed, children need activities. Children do need to know and experience the benefits of teamwork, training, discipline, sportsmanship and camaraderie. Children need to know what it is like to be a part of something that is much larger than their selves. Children need to experience the joy/pain, laughter/tears, of the excitement of winning and the disappointment of losing. I have supported my child in cheer both in school and privately. My child eats, sleeps and breathes cheer. She spends hours on the ‘net’ developing her skill by observing proper form and technique. First thing when she wakes on a Saturday morn, before teeth/before face, is hit the trampoline and practice-to-perfection what she has studied and envisioned from the night before. Not a day goes by without cheer. It is her life. It is part of what defines her. She is confident, skilled and focused. She enjoys watching and helping her cheer-mates perform difficult stunts, tumbling and gymnastics moves. She even genuinely praises them when their skills have surpassed her own. She desires to be on a team that is cohesive and determined. She wants to be on a team that is not afraid of hard work and self- sacrifice. She wants all her teammates to do their best and adores it when they do. She is humble, too. A good deal of her attributes came before cheer. She is thoughtful of others–especially parents. Some, on her current team, are of the persuasion that money is no object. These few barely have a pot or a window to toss their waste, yet, they dictate the affairs of the team. This strains teams, relationships and families.

Responsible parents do what they can to support their children’s endeavors. The operative word, Mr. Hanbery, is responsible. My responsibility is to provide shelter, food, clothing, healthcare, and education. My responsibility is to provide morale support and discipline when needed. My responsibility, as a single parent, is to be self-sustaining, self-reliant, independent as well as interdependent. My responsibility is to seek sources of financial support for the activities my child loves so we both can share the experience in joy, love and peace. My responsibility is to stay gainfully employed. My responsibility is not to accept the guilt-trip-ridden post of those who stand to benefit of my meager dollar bill earned. I’m incensed with your audacity, Mr. Hanbery. Like the ‘For Dummies’ books, why would you want to pay someone to call you dumb?

I have spent considerable time on this but not quite enough. My post here was several hours of other searches that said basically the same, ‘We built it, but only those with lots of cash can come’ or ‘We built it, but we can’t tell you the location’ or ‘We built it and we’re telling you the location, but you are never, ever gonna get it.’

Angela and Tricial4, thank you. Mr. Hanbery, there are several Websites out there that work hard at eliminating the stereotypes associated with cheer. Mean-spiritedness is something we all can do without.

My search continues…

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