Archive for Cheerleading
DegreeGirl Don’t Fret the Sweat iHome Player and Gift Set Giveaway
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The DegreeGirl “Don’t Fret The Sweat” campaign recently awarded $20,000 to five winning cheerleading teams of the Degree Girl Varsity Awards on their Facebook page. These cool and confident teams told DFTS how they were able to come together to overcome sweat-inducing moments and then rallied their communities to vote for them on Facebook. In celebration of the winning teams SportsGirlsPlay.com is hosting a giveaway a Degree Girl gift set for you, too!
The giveaway package includes:
- iHome – inspiring teams to get active before, during or after practice, with quick and easy music access
- Degree Girl Just Dance deodorant
- Degree Girl gym bag to hold gear
- Degree Girl water bottle to stay cool during workouts
The Degree Girl team sent us one of the giveaway sets to keep so we could give you our take on each item in the set. The iHome player is a fun docking station and speaker for your iPod that changes colors as the music plays. It charges your iPod while it plays music – perfect for practices, relaxing in your room or hanging out with friends. My 13-year old daughter immediately took the iHome to her room and it has become a part of her decor.
In addition, the gift set comes with a black gym bag for carrying all your gear to and from practice. The bag is very roomy and has plenty of pockets, too. The Degree Girl is my teen’s new favorite deodorant – according to her, it smells good and after using it for the past few weeks of gymnastics practices she has asked for a second one to keep in her locker.
So, how do you win this gift set for yourself?
Required entry: Leave us a comment on this post telling about a situation in sports that tested your nerves at first, but through determination, courage or encouragement from friends, you made it through! It could be about your first game, a championship meet, learning a new skill – you name it, we want to hear about it!
Bonus entries: Get BONUS ENTRIES by letting your friends know about our giveaway. Get one extra entry for each of the following, but come back and leave a second comment telling us where you shared it:
- Post about it on your own blog, in a forum, tweet about it or share it with your friends on Facebook
- Follow us on Twitter (we are @SportsGirlsPlay) – please send us a tweet letting us know you are following us and introduce yourself, too.
- Like us on Facebook (we are SportsGirlsPlay and Don’tFretTheSweat) – again, feel free to leave us a note on Facebook saying hello and that you are entering the giveaway.
Rules
- Leave your comment(s) no later than midnight January 10, 2012.
- Make sure your email address is right. We only use it to contact the winners and we will NEVER share it or publish it.
- You must be 13 or older to enter. If you are under 13, just ask your parent, grandparent, favorite aunt or uncle to enter for you!
- We will be using the “And the winner is” plugin to select one (1) winners at random.
Disclosure: Degree Girl sent us a gift pack for purpose of review but the opinions of the products are our own!
Preventing Cheerleading Injuries
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As the debate as to whether cheerleading is a sport continues and as cheerleading statistically continues to be considered one of the more dangerous high school sports, it is important to note that many cheerleading injuries can be prevented. STOP Sports Injuries, a campaign started by famous sports professionals and well-known national organizations, has an entire section of their website devoted to sports specific injury prevention, treatment guidelines, videos, and resources. Cheerleading is one of the sports for which they have valuable information for parents, coaches and cheerleaders.
The information available on STOP Sports Injuries that pertains to cheerleading specifically, includes:
- What types of injuries are most common in cheerleading?
- How can injuries be prevented?
- How are cheerleading injuries treated?
Visit the site and download the printable cheerleading injury fact sheet for more information.
The Cheerleading as a Sport Debate Continues
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Cheerleading – and what it has evolved into – is on trial right now in a Connecticut courtroom. The debate revloves around a law suit brought on by the volleyball team at Quinnipiac University over the school’s decision to cut their team violated Title IX because of the resulting imbalance of athletic opportunities for women at the school. The university claims that new opportunities in competitive cheer balance out the numbers. So, what this is boiling down to is the question of Cheerleading being a competitive sport or not?
My thoughts:
No – cheerleading should not be considered a competitive sport for Title IX purposes. Even though cheerleaders are performing more and more athletic moves, train like athletes and now have more competitive opportunities within their “sport”, the primary role of cheerleading at the high school and college level has traditionally been to cheer on and support the school’s athletic teams.
If competitive cheer is going to evolve into a “sport” of its own that basically combines the elements of dance, gymnastics and acrobatics, then they need to give it a new name. And there is a trend to that – it’s called Stunt and Tumble. And even if it develops into a new sport, should a “new” sport replace a well establish sport in a college sport line up? I don’t think so. Even Cheerleading expert Jeff Webb agrees that cheerleading should not be considered a competitive sport for Title IX purposes.
So, what are your thoughts? Competitive sport or NOT?
