WEEK 14 - Posting 14

My favorite piece of data for this project has definitely been some of the sources that I have found on the internet. Because I am already a cheerleader, the observations that I made did not take me by surprise, just for the fact of that I already knew what I was going to be expecting. But with some of the internet sources, I seemed to find a lot of things that I did not know about cheerleading previously to research. 

One of the things that stuck out to me that I learned was how the sport of cheerleading began. I found this particular thing highly interesting because I was surprised to learn that men, instead of women, were actually the first ones to start what is now known as cheerleading. Women did over-populate the cheerleading population until men were forced to fight in World War I, and the tradition of women being the dominate sex in cheerleading has continued ever since. 

Another thing that I found interesting that I did not know before researching this subculture was that the majority of people actually do think that cheerleading should be classified as a sport. A poll taken at about.com, proves that a large portion of the voters, surprisingly more than half, felt as though cheerleading does not get the recognition that it deserves.

After cheering for ten years, it amazes me that there are still things that I do not know about the sport, and am still learning. The internet and my other sources during this research has really broadened my knowledge as far as cheerleading concerns.