NCAA Cheerleading Competition

The NCAA Cheerleading Competition previously known as NCAA Cheerdance Competition is an annual one-day event of the National Collegiate Athletic Association for cheerleading. However, it does not count in the tabulation to determine the NCAA Overall Champion.

It was sponsored by Nestlé in 2004 and 2005 and was known as the NCAA Nestlé Non-Stop Cheerdance Competition. In 2007, the competition was sponsored by Samsung and was called as Samsung NCAA Cheerdance Competition. The event was also sanctioned by Cheerleading Philippines Federation (CP) and thus adopted the official scoring criteria used in international cheerleading. The name of the competition was changed in 2008. The criteria for the 2009 Samsung NCAA Cheerleading Competition was patterned with the National Cheerleading Championship or NCC. The judges also came from the said competition. This gives NCAA a special privilege where NCC granted slots for the 2010 NCC Finals for the top three winners. In the 87th season of the NCAA, cheerleading has been upgraded to a regular sport which means it will contribute points in the overall championship race.

Competition Cheerleading As a Sport: In Hartford, Connecticut in 2010 at Quinnipiac University they announced that they were going to eliminate their volleyball team and give the funding to the competition cheerleading team. But the funds came from the state so they had to get permission to switch where the funding went. They had to go to federal court to present their case. There was already a law; in every state, it is called Title IX. Title IX is about gender discrimination in sports and how everyone has an equal chance to be on the team. Quinnipiac tried to use Title IX to have the court persuaded and join their side of the argument. But during the case the judge found out that Quinnipiac was wrongly manipulating the rosters of all the sports teams at the school. After the judge found out all of the things that the school was doing wrong to stack their teams he did not grant cheerleading the right to have the sports funding. The judge said that cheerleading was too underdeveloped and unorganized. But he also stated that the subject will be brought up again and that cheerleading will eventually be granted sports recognition, it is just a matter of time. (Eaton-Robb)

Eaton-Robb,Pat. "U.S. Judge in Conn.: Cheerleading Not A Sport." msnbc.com 21 July 2010. Website.