There is a huge controversy in high school sports that concerns many young women, and sometimes young men that label themselves as cheerleader. Should cheerleading be recognized as a sport or activity? Cheerleading is an activity, but can be easily considered a sport. Though some sports may be considered more rigorous, no two sports are the same. There is a huge difference between football and baseball or swim and lacrosse, but at the end of the day they are all considered sports. No, cheerleading is not physically one on one with the other team, but they put in just as much effort as any other sport. This is where the controversy begins.
           

There are many different types of cheer teams, so this makes it harder to distinguish it as a sport or not. There are cheer teams who stunt and compete in competitions, nearly year round and then there are the teams who may or may not stunt but don’t compete. Many high school cheer teams do not compete because their obligations are to their school and their sports, but others do both. Another variation of cheer teams is if they stunt or not. Some cheer teams stunt and are known as the traditional cheerleaders, and then there are the teams that are primarily dance based, but still cheer on their teams or school at sports games and other activities. The cheer teams that do not stunt and focus on dance, may not be considered cheerleaders, instead be labeled as spirit leaders, but still do the same thing as cheerleaders, lead cheers. No matter whether you do stunts or not, there is one key component that is alike, choreography. Choreography is the moves and sequences of the moves to either a beat or song, like a dance or cheer. Choreography is like making a play, it takes hard work and consideration to make sure that everything goes right and that there are no problems. Cheerleaders even have their own play book, its known as the call sheet. This call sheet has every cheer that the team will chant, and just like the plays there are certain times to do certain cheers. There are so many aspects of cheerleading that are characteristics of sports, so why is it not a sport? Cheerleading has so many variations, so it is hard to say that one cheer team is considered a sport, while the other one is just an activity, but this is what is happening. There is so much confusion of what cheerleading is so it should be called what it really is, so if you ask me, call it a sport.