Teen cheerleaders

"I make allowances for your youth, but I expect a certain amount of responsibility, and instead of which you enslave yourself to this, this … cult!"

(OK, yes, that headline is mainly there to mess with the Google perverts.)

Posted two stories for the paper this week about competitive cheerleading (here and here), both of which were characterized as "sports" stories.

Debating whether or not things like competitive cheerleading are "sports" isn't particularly fruitful, but I am always suspicious of purported sports that are decided, like pageants, by a panel of judges. The same could be said, of course, for diving (or even boxing, although that involves going toe-to-toe with an opponent and thus has a stronger claim for, er, sporthood).

The question, "Yes, but is it a sport?" shouldn't be taken to imply that the competitions in question are somehow illegitimate. Competitive ballroom dancing, for example, involves an impressive display of grace and athleticism. But just because they sometimes show it on ESPN2 doesn't mean it's a "sport." (It probably means, instead, that we probably have a few too many ESPNs.)

We probably need some way of honoring and respecting such competitors that isn't dependent on whether or not they qualify as "athletes" in recognized "sports." Olympic cheerleading — not cheerleaders for the Olympic teams, but cheerleaders as Olympians themselves — is probably inevitable. (And when it comes, Canada will take the gold with a bunch of ringers from Cirque du Soleil.)

Anyway, that's not my point. The squads in these cheerleading competitions work hard and train hard and perform impressive feats in competition and it doesn't really matter whether or not we classify what they do as a "sport."

My point is what is the point? Competitive cheerleading has created a New Thing: the cheerleading squad that does not actually "cheer," that is not connected to any team for which they could cheer. They can't spell out the team's name because there is no team. There is no one to hear their exhortation to "be aggressive" — no team that could "be more aggressive" and no game in which this nonexistent team could B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. They can't urge the defense to take that ball away, take that ball away because there is no defense. There is no ball.

Cheering, like love, requires an object. Take away the object, and what's left?

This is probably a metaphor for something, I just don't know what.