Several colleges are looking to take the ‘leading’ out of cheerleading. Or at least create a new branch of the sport. While the name has yet to be agreed upon, several colleges have already intergraded the new sport which will include gymnastic type floor routines, with around 20 people, coupled with challenging partner/group stunts. So far, six schools have taken the new sport on, but in order for the NCAA to recognize it, at least four more institutions need to adopt varsity programs or show their intention to do so. If and when this happens, the sport would have 10 years to have at least 40 NCAA schools take on the sport at the varsity level (or show consistent progress in that direction) for the NCAA to enact a championship.
This could erase everything we think of competitive cheerleading. These routines would be incredibly athletic, packed with difficult stunts and competitions would occur more than once a year.
Felecia Mulkey, University of Oregon’s head coach commented, “we took steps to keep the athletic portion of competitive cheerleading, but we were adding things, because there are some problems in our sport. You take a two-minute-and-15-second routine performed once a year at a national championship and you can understand why a mainstream sports fan would say, ‘This is not a sport.'”