A Sport: Is Cheerleading A Sport?

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The word ‘sport’ brings many different ones to mind. Football, most likely being the first. The one to cross minds last, is cheerleading. But, it depends if the person considers cheerleading a sport or not. The Women’s Sports Foundation has narrowed down elements that are commonly agreed creates a sport (varsity.com). One element is it must be a physical activity which involves propelling a mass through space or overcoming the resistance of a mass. The second element is competing against/with an opponent is required. A third element is it must be governed by rules that explicitly define the time, space, and purpose of the contest and the conditions under which a winner is declared. The last element is acknowledgement that the primary purpose of the competition is a comparison of the relative skills of the participants. In this essay I will be arguing that cheerleading is a sport because it includes all of these elements. First, I will be giving examples and …show more content…

Politics, for example, is competitive and some could argue using the right definition that it is a sport. But, by the elements and definition I am using, politics is not a sport. I will use the presidency race between Trump and Clinton for an example. Although Trump and Clinton are competing against each other and this satisfies the second elements, they are not propelling a mass through space. Politics does not fulfill all the elements, and therefore is not a sport by this definition. Another example, is cooking. There are cooking competitions and some could argue because cooking can be competitive, it is a sport. Even so, by the definition I am using, cooking does not qualify as a sport. Cooking has the same problem as politics, it does not propel a mass through space or overcome the resistance of a mass. Despite meeting some of the elements, cooking does not meet all of them, therefore, cooking is not a

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