Column: Three cheers for these athletes

At every basketball game, football game or athletic promotional event, there is something constant: the cheerleaders. The cheerleaders dressed in red and white — a staple at a school with no mascot — are now National Champions, as well. On Jan. 14, the Crimson all-female squad won the UCA College National Championship. That’s right. IU has a National Championship team on the campus again, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say many people didn’t even notice.

How could this be? Shouldn’t we all get to see the talents of this team? What if I told you that we already do?

It appears that this is the case. After speaking with IU Coach Julie Horine, it became more apparent that we do get to see the skills that helped this squad achieve what they have been working toward.

“From a coaching standpoint, everyone has seen those skills at every game, so I just don’t think they notice them in the same context,” Horine said.

Those kicks, flips and lifts do not come easy. Even though the sideline game cheering isn’t the real athletic part of the sport, it doesn’t mean members of both the all-female and the co-ed teams aren’t athletes.

These teams practice three days a week, plus open gym times, and participate in all the home games and PR events for the IU Athletics Department. That’s a full-time commitment and comes with some of the same sacrifices that other student athletes make.

Then always comes the next question: Is cheerleading a sport? The answer to that is a little bit gray, and that seems to be okay with the cheerleaders and the coaches.

“Do I believe that cheerleading is a sport? Not necessarily,” Horine said. “What you see at a game is an athletic activity, but what the kids did last weekend at Orlando would be a sport.”

That statement seems to be what most people would agree with. Cheering on the sidelines doesn’t make the entire squad athletes, but the commitment and desire the teams showed all season make them athletes.

It took 12 years for the all-female squad to win a National Championship and beat out the best cheer squads in the country. The all-female team had been in the top four for the past six years, but the focus of this year’s team put it over the edge.

The all-female squad wasn’t the only team to represent the Hoosiers proudly. The co-ed team finished fourth in its division.

The co-ed team had to jump over a lot of hurdles this season to get to where it was. The members of the team participated in the smaller division, which allows teams to compete with four males and 12 females.

This forced the team to change all it had done in previous years and start anew. It is the ability to adapt to change and overcome that helped the squad make up for lost time.

Whether anyone believes cheerleading should or should not be considered a sport does not matter at this point. What matters is that we have National Champions at IU again, and it’s time for everyone to take notice.