Cheering for cheerleading

Today, Cheer Pilipinas holds its annual National Cheer Championships at the Blue Eagle Gym at the Ateneo de Manila University. Hundreds of cheerleaders from all over the country, from ages eight upwards, will be vying for recognition. All the girls’ events will be held today, while the co-ed routines and skills challenges will be staged Sunday.

Over the last 20 years, cheerleading has been on an explosive rise in the country. Since defeating other Southeast Asian countries even at the high school level, it has spread throughout the archipelago. Now, the country competes at the highest level in the world, going toe-to-toe with the big football schools in the United States. As of now, the Philippines is in the Top 10, in the top tier of cheerleading in the world.

“We really wanted to be at the highest level, to see where we stand against countries like the US,” explains Cheer Pilipinas chairman Itos Valdes, who has been leading and professionalizing the industry since 2006. “We saw that, while America’s men are big, their women are just the same size as Filipinas.”

The size of the men makes a big difference in terms of the stunts they can include in their routines, like balancing a female partner on one hand, and forming four-level human pyramids, where other countries can only do three levels. This is a major factor in international competition, where judges see how many team members you can have in the air.

The International Olympic Committee has recognized cheer as a sport, separate from gymnastics and dancesport. Though it has some elements of gymnastics, its routines are different. And to be clear, there is no dancing in cheer. The cheerdancing performed in collegiate leagues in the Philippines with music, costumes and up to fifty percent dancing, is the only one of its kind in the world. Cheerleading has no costumes or dancing; only uniforms and their own creative routines. The International Cheer Union (ICU) is aiming to hold competitions in upcoming Olympic Games, since it has surpassed all the requirements in terms of having its own standards and number of countries involved.

“Locally, we’re also planning club competitions, since many cheerleaders don’t want to retire after graduating,” Valdes adds. “We have a full-time national team training for events like the ICU World Championships held in Disney World in Orlando every year. We’re trying to send a team this April because the athletes really want to go, unless travel advisories are against it.”

Cheerleading is one traditional sport where Filipinos have been proven to excel. If it is eventually included into the Olympic Games, we may just see our first Olympic medal in a team sport. The good news is that continuity is assured, as more and more youth aspire to become cheerleaders, no matter how challenging the training is. Now that everything is formal and standardized, the sport is sure to grow even faster.

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