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Cheerleader Girls Training
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Cheerleading is currently most closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as association football (soccer), ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. The Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have cheerleaders. Debuting in 2003, the "Marlin Mermaids" gained national exposure and have influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads.
There has been debate on whether or not cheerleading truly is a sport. Supporters consider cheerleading, as a whole, a sport, citing the heavy use of athletic talents while critics do not see it as deserving of that status since sport implies a competition among squads and not all squads compete, along with subjectivity of competitions where - as with gymnastics, diving, and figure skating - scores are assessed based on human judgment and not an objective goal or measurement of time.
On January 27, 2009, in a lawsuit involving an accidental injury sustained during a cheerleading practice, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that cheerleading is a full-contact sport in that state. In contrast, on July 21, 2010, in a lawsuit involving whether college cheerleading qualified as a sport for purposes of Title IX, a federal court, citing a current lack of program development and organization, ruled that it does not, but may in the future.
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