Sign up for the battlefordsNOW newsletter

IOC Cheerleading decision positive step for sport, local club

Dec 8, 2016 | 4:00 PM

When Lesia Rathje was in elementary school, she was so inspired by the movie Bring It On that she went with a group of friends to her principal to get permission to start a cheerleading team.

So yesterday, when the International Olympic Committee announced it was giving the sport of cheerleading provisional recognition, the North Battleford native’s immediate reaction was very positive.

“It’s a really good step in the right direction,” Rathje said. She now runs Cheer Legacy Athletics in town and is also the coach of John Paul’s cheerleading team, despite having attended NBCHS while growing up.

“It’s something that cheerleaders all over the world kind of battle all the time, is people saying, ‘Well, it’s not a sport, it’s not in the Olympics. It’s not a sport!’ When people think of cheerleading, they usually think pom-poms cheering on the sidelines of a football game,” she said. “That’s definitely not what it is anymore. That’s how it started, absolutely. But that’s not what it is anymore.”

So what is cheerleading now?

“It’s a combination of gymnastics, acrobatics, a little bit of dance mixed in there, and it’s absolutely a sport,” Rathje said. “So it just kind of made everyone feel good that we kind of got recognition for all the hard work that we do.”

The IOC giving cheerleading recognition does not mean it will automatically be an Olympic Sport.

What it means is the international body, in this case the International Cheer Union (ICU), will receive $25,000 of funding annually, but perhaps more importantly, it means the sports can petition in the future to be included in the games, the way skateboarding, surfing, and sport climbing did recently. Those three sports will now be part of the 2020 games in Tokyo.

Rathje believes one day cheerleading will absolutely be a part of the Olympics.

“That would immensely help the sport grow, because when kids reach a certain age, there’s kind of nowhere for them to go anymore,” she said, explaining that many athletes “max out” at 19 or 20 years old. “Just having that goal of competing at the Olympics, I think will keep athletes involved in the sport longer, as athletes, coaches – in any capacity really.”

As far as cheerleading goes here in Saskatchewan, Rathje said the sport is growing.

She also said there are already teams in places you wouldn’t expect.

“Weyburn has a cheerleading program, Warman has a really big, successful cheerleading program, same with Saskatoon – they have Prairie Fire,” she said, adding that she was with the Prairie Fire when the club began 11 years ago and got most of her experience there.

“Some people might not even know that we have a cheerleading program or even a cheerleading team at John Paul,” she said.

The JP team and Cheer Legacy often compete in the same tournaments, but in different divisions. The school team competes in the varsity division, while the club team competes in the all-star division.

The season doesn’t ramp up until March and April, but they do begin practicing in September.

“March and April is our competitive season. So we travel to different local competitions,” Rathje said. “That’s kind of the goal: you put together a routine and you go to these to these competitions and you perform your two and half minute routine and it gets judged and a winner is chosen.”

But neither team strictly stays local.

One team from Cheer Legacy will compete in Ottawa in February, while another team will head to Mississauga – just outside of Toronto – in early May. JP will compete in Niagara Falls in February. Plus, there are events in Edmonton, Regina, Warman, and provincials this year will be in Weyburn.

So while all of those events are a ways away, Rathje and the entire cheerleading community can be happy that international recognition could translate to an increased interest right here at home.

And maybe, just maybe, people’s misconception about what cheerleading is can finally be put to rest.

“I’ve never held a pom-pom in my life,” Rathje said. “That’s part of the history of the sport and it will never be forgotten but it’s not what it is anymore.”

 

 

 

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11