Cheerleading A Sport
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Three decades after the women's liberation movement shattered the second-string status of females in American society, a growing number of modern girls are embracing an activity from the era of homemakers, bobby socks and bullet bras: cheerleading.
Why, ask their puzzled mothers, would a girl choose to cheer rather than run, throw or wrestle?
``It's one of these quandaries for feminists,'' said Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. ``If the culture treated it with respect, that would be great.''
But this is not your mother's cheerleading.
Today, cheerleading has moved from the sidelines to front and center. It has been reshaped by a generation of athletic youth raised on self-esteem classes and Title IX, the pivotal 1972 legislation that mandated boys and girls receive equal sporting opportunities.
Different focus
Not only has it become highly competitive, it is now comparable to gymnastics' physical training, with its strenuous tumbling runs, human pyramids, backflips, lifts, catches and tosses. Most ``all-star'' cheerleaders don't cheer -- their routines are choreographed to music instead.
``Cheering at football games is boring,'' said Taylor Zentner, 13, of Livermore, a cheerleader since age 5 and a member of the all-star team called Tri-Valley Elite...