But it's not a story about a sports team or an athlete, rather a judgement, a court case where a decision was made that generically, Cheerleading, 'those pretty girls' that wave the pom-poms and dance a routine at sports fixtures, is not a Sport.
A federal judge in Connecticut ruled that the activity was "too underdeveloped and disorganised" to be considered a sport under the law.
The case revolved around a March 2009 lawsuit from members of Quinnipac University's women's volleyball team, which claimed the Hamden, Connecticut, school's plan to eliminate the team while creating a new varsity sport called "competitive cheerleading" was illegal.
In other words, one sport was being eliminated for another sport, much like the IOC dropped Women's Softball for Women's Boxing for the 2012 London Olympics.
"I hold that the University's competitive cheerleading team does not qualify as a varsity sport for the purposes of Title IX, and, therefore, its members may not be counted as athletic participants," Judge Underhill wrote in a 95-page decision.
http://www.news.com.au/world/cheerleading-not-a-sport-judge-rules/story-e6frfkyi-1225895453636
Sports in Court is nothing new of course. One need only look in our own Australian back yard to see that sports and court are quite good friends with a long and rich history of such 'meetings'.
Sport tribunals at national, state and local levels are quite busy with official referee or umpire reports going in about 'behaviour unbecoming' on the field of play. Rugby League and Aussie Rules players are regularly suspended for play and fined, or alternatively they are cleared, often on video evidence. This is nothing new.
The Olympics too has its tribunals and we've seen this at work, particularly in association with drugs in sport. Even a few cups of coffee can land an athlete in hot water and take years to have one's name cleared.
What is interesting is that the judge in the above case referred to cheerleading as "too underdeveloped and disorganised".
Yet every professional sport, college sport and high school in the USA has cheer leaders and what is more, movies involving intrigue and skulduggery have been made about 'cheer leader' contests.
Australia too has professional cheerleaders.
Therefore, it it's not a sport, what generic category might cheer leading fall within. What about: 'Culture', 'Dance' or perhaps 'Science – Physical Motion'. Yet in the Olympics, the gymnasts have contests that appear to fall into all these.
In Australia in the fifties and sixties the 'Marching Girls' were a huge hit with local, regional, state and national contests. It doesn't appear as though Marching was ever deemed an official Sport, but maybe, it should have been.
This USA decision leaves open the question of what constitutes a Sport? The first definition in the Free On-line Dictionary says of Sport: "Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Sport
We could be in 'appeal' territory here …..