cheerleading

Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to entertain the audience, or for competition. Cheerleading routines typically range anywhere from one to three minutes, and contain components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting. Cheerleading originated in the United States, where it has become a tradition. It is less prevalent in the rest of the world, except via its association with American sports or organized cheerleading contests. Modern cheerleading is very closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as association football (soccer), ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling will sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. Some Brazilian association football (soccer) teams that play in the Brazilian Serie A have cheerleading squads, such as Bahia, Fortaleza and Botafogo. In baseball, the Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have a cheerleading team. Cheerleading originated as an all-male activity in the United States, and is popular predominantly in America, with an estimated 3.85 million participants in 2017.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Cheerleading”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

cheerleading is sports activity in which the participants cheer for their team as a form of encouragement, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 28 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶