Reflective Essay: What Makes Cheerleading A Sport?

Overall, I think my presentation went very well. I think I captured the attention of my peers and really helped them understand my topic and my viewpoint. Personally, I typically have bad experiences with presenting because I let my nerves get the best of me, but I found this to be much less stressful. I really enjoyed how we got to pick a topic of our own choice and had the opportunity to educate our classmates.
I wanted to start my presentation off with my activity, so I made a Kahoot survey. My survey was for all the members in my group to guess which absurd sport was real. I thought this would be a nice segway to start talking about what makes a sport and what guidelines are necessary to qualify something as a sport. I wanted them to see …show more content…
I decided to ask them a few questions to see how much they actually knew about cheerleading and what exactly competitive cheer looks like. I found a video of my favorite college cheerleading team competing at nationals to show them how intense cheerleading can get compared to just sitting on the sidelines at a football game. As they watched the routine they were so amazed by the flare of cheerleading it almost cast a spell on them. Jacob said “Woah, there is a person on top of a person!” and made it sound like it was one of the coolest things he has ever seen. After showing them the video I wanted to see if that changed their opinion on whether or not it should be considered a sport. Most of them thought that cheer at the college level should be considered a sport, but all of them agreed cheerleading exceeded their expectations which made me pleasantly …show more content…
Everyone in the discussion said they all enjoy watching the Olympics. I told them the IOC has declared cheerleading a sport and there is a chance it may be integrated into the Olympic Games in these upcoming years. I talked about how more and more new sports are being added to the Olympics such as surfing and skateboarding and I asked if this would make it more exciting to watch. Liam said “surfing is cool, but skateboarding shouldn’t be allowed in the Olympics. The Olympics are supposed to be elegant”. I asked him if he thought cheerleading was elegant enough to be in the Olympics and he said “yes, it’s the same as gymnastics.” They didn’t have much of an opinion on how they would feel if it were added to the Games because they all simulate it to gymnastics, but they both have very different