Have you ever talked to people after a cheer competition and it seems like every single person won? Well that’s because they did, but not against many. Lately cheerleading has become a less, and less competitive sport and more teams seem to get a gold medal for simply participating. Levels and Divisions such as flex teams, 4.1s, 4.2s, 5.2s, U17, and having multiple competitions that crown you “world champions,” have slowly worked to make the sport of cheerleading less competitive and less rewarding.

Cheerleading wasn’t always like this, you used to win because of skill and not because your coaches wanted to make up some division. It used to be about the work you put in, the family you created, and the triumphant feeling you got after hitting, but now all anyone cares about is winning, even against no one. 

It’s becoming harder to tell whose good and whose not because the best teams may be losing to better teams in 6 team divisions, while the teams that constantly fall get a free ride to fame, or so they make it seem. All these crazy divisions are getting unfair for the real, hard divisions that actually compete and work hard to hit. And while the athletes are a part of these teams and like to act as if they’re the best in the world from these empty first place trophies, it’s the coaches who are creating these teams, knowing going into it that they won’t even need to be good to win.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of these teams that do really good and work really hard. They may compete against 0 teams sometimes but after watching them you think “wow, they deserve to win.” But at the end of the day, there’s still the teams that get gold participation medals, and that isn’t what this sport was made for.