Song cheerleaders work to perfect their routine to prepare for a soon to come CIF competition. Photo by Francisco Nguyen.
By Elise Tran, Staff Writer
Starting the 2017-2018 school year, competitive cheer is now considered a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) sport due to the signing of Assembly Bill (AB) 949 by Governor Jerry Brown in October 2015.
However, AB 949 does not include sideline cheer. For Fountain Valley High School (FVHS), cheerleaders who do not competitively cheer will have to cheer for more sport games such as soccer, according to head coach Tara Bearden.
“Say somebody doesn’t compete: when it comes down to competition season and [the competitors] are doing all those more hours, the non-competitors have to do more hours; so, they do more games,” said Bearden.
Previous years, cheerleaders received credit for half a year of physical education (P.E.) and half a year of performing arts. Freshmen cheerleaders were also required to take one semester of P.E. Now, all cheer teams will get credit for a whole year of P.E. but none for performing arts.
“I think [cheer and song] is where it belongs because there is song on pep squad which are dancers, and they’re definitely performing arts, but they are athletes as well,” said Bearden. “It’s unfortunate for them that they lose that performing art part, but if they had to pick of the two, they’d say, ‘Yeah we want to be considered a sport as well.’”
Because of this, all rules regulated by CIF now apply to competitive cheer, resulting in alterations for cheer competitions. For example, cheer can only participate in competitions that are sanctioned with CIF. One of the more prominent changes for the FVHS cheer team is that they are no longer allowed to compete on Sundays (CIF Bylaw 504.M.), which they used to do frequently, according to Bearden.
“I think it’s pretty cool to finally be recognized for working hard as other sports do. We still practice, compete, work hard and train as much as they do,” said cheer caption Bailey Downing (’18).
