While the announcement of baseball’s return to campus made the big splash last Friday, the accompanying unveiling of a new women’s sport – competitive cheerleading – raised just as many eyebrows.
However, for many, the question was: Why cheerleading?
“We looked at a variety of emerging sports and NCAA sports and it came down to that competitive cheer was a sport that was growing very fast,” said Reneé Baumgartner, the Senior Women’s Adviser and an Associate Athletic Director with the athletic department.
Baumgartner’s assertion is backed by the athletic department’s assertion that cheerleading squads are fielded by almost all Oregon high schools and 80% of high schools nationally. The Oregon School Activities Association, the governing body for high school sports in the state, lists 69 schools in seven different divisions as competitors in last year’s state cheerleading competition.
When Oregon’s competitive cheerleading program begins competing in the 2008-09 school year, they will have 3.5 scholarships available at the coach’s discretion, Baumgartner said, which will ramp up to up to 12 scholarships by the start of the 2011-12 season. On Friday, Baumgartner confirmed that the competitive cheerleading team would have locker room facilities in the Casanova Center, and would practice at the Moshofsky Center. The athletic department also hope to hold a cheerleading competition at the Moshofsky Center.
The team will likely compete in Division I of the National Cheerleading Association, and will be placed against other schools that compete in Division I NCAA college football. Bowl Championship Series-division schools that competed at this year’s NCA national championships include the University of Louisville, Rutgers, North Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Maryland.
“Competitive cheer is a sport with a remarkable upside, as the participation rates at the youth, all-star and high school levels attest,” Deborah A. Yow, the director of athletics at Maryland, said in a statement released by the Oregon athletic department. In 2003, Maryland became the first school to adopt competitive cheerleading as a varsity sport, and has won the NCA national championship each of the last two years.
“(In 2003) competitive cheer was already the ninth-most popular high school sport for girls; today, just four years later, it ranks as the fastest growing girls’ sport at the prep level,” Yow said. “Those are facts one can’t dismiss when selecting a sport to add.”
Baumgartner said that getting ahead of the curve on a growing sport was an incentive for Oregon to make competitive cheer a varsity sport; “I feel that within 10 years the NCAA will certify (competitive cheer) as a varsity sport and we’ll be on the front end, leading the charge with Maryland,” Baumgartner said.
On the outside looking in
One remaining hurdle for competitive cheerleading is certification as an NCAA varsity sport. Because it is not certified, the sport raises questions regarding Title IX compliance; this is a reason many thought Oregon would add a different sport – rumors included crew, swimming and water polo – when the announcement was made last Friday. Though Baumgartner is confident that the sport counts toward Title IX compliance, its lack of certification brings the issue into question.
The NCAA itself addresses the issue in its “Gender Equity Manual.” On page 19 of the manual, a paragraph seeks to clarify the issue of what counts as a sport and what does not. To quote from the manual:
“The OCR (Office of Civil Rights) has taken then position that cheerleading squads, for example, are support services and not varsity programs. This view has begun to change as competitive opportunities for cheerleading have increased nationally and as schools offer coaching, practice facilities, equipment and scholarship opportunities to squad members who compete against squads at other colleges and universities.”
The manual then continues and delineates what a sport is: selected by “objective factors related primarily to athletics ability”; a defined season; a system of practices and preparation equal to other sports; and a defined role as a sport for competition, not a squad for support of another athletic event.
Baumgartner vehemently held that the Oregon squad would be treated separately from the cheerleading squad present at other Duck games and would meet the other requirements. In addition, Baumgartner and the athletic department hold that the competitive cheer team will count toward the “history and continuing practice of program expansion” prong of Title IX compliance. Outlined on page 21 of the NCAA handbook, this allows schools not in proportional compliance (which Oregon is not) to meet Title IX requirements by showing a dedication toward expanding athletic opportunities for the under-represented sex.
However, because competitive cheer is not a varsity NCAA sport, the University must petition the Office of Civil Rights in order to determine whether or not the sport in question will meet Title IX. Baumgartner was optimistic Friday that the sport, as they intend to support it, would be included, and mentioned that the University’s legal counsel had been in contact with the OCR to ensure their new team would be eligible for Title IX requirements.