Title IX anniversary: Maryland cuts cheerleading, but was it ever a sport?

There’s no doubt these women are athletes. They form towering human pyramids with flipping dismounts. They perform jaw-dropping tumbling passes, with multiple acrobats reeling off synchronized back handsprings and back flips with uncanny precision. And they end with a 2¹ / _2-minute routine that combines their tumbling and aerial skills with hip-hop dance moves.

But it’s evident the sport still struggles with its identity — particularly as it relates to cheerleading. While pompoms aren’t part of the routines, the head judge raises a silver pompom to signal it’s time for the next event. And each routine ends with clap of hands and spirited shout of “Terps!”

Letters to Loh

Read the letters from state delegates Benjamin Kramer and Neil Parrott to University President Wallace Loh asking for further examination of the decision regarding the men’s and women’s swimming teams.

But to distinguish themselves from cheerleaders, acro athletes compete in volleyball-style shorts, rather than skirts, and wear shirts with numbers on the back.

The squad members at West Virginia’s Fairmont State go one step further, competing with eye-black smeared on their cheekbones. And at California’s Azusa Pacific, acro athletes wear weightlifting-style gloves. The Terps, however, make no visual apology for their cheerleading heritage, sporting bows in their hair.

“Every team has their own thing,” says senior Lauren Shannon, an all-American from Silver Spring. “A lot of teams are trying to move away from cheerleading, but we are what we are. We are still cheerleaders, and we will always wear hair bows!”

That’s hardly the only divide in the sport, which has worked hard the last two years to prove it deserves NCAA recognition, adding rigor to its competition format and adopting an objective, gymnastics-based scoring system.

There are now two sports derived from cheerleading — acrobatics and tumbling (the branch Maryland started) and stunt (backed by USA Cheer) — seeking the NCAA’s endorsement. It’s unclear whether either will succeed. But should cheerleading by any name blossom into a major college sport, Maryland, a onetime pioneer, will watch from the sidelines.

In Haglund’s view, that’s not because competitive cheer failed. Rather, it’s because Maryland’s insolvent athletics department simply can’t fund 27 varsity teams. Debbie Yow, Maryland’s athletic director when competitive cheer was added and now the athletic director at North Carolina State, declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate given that she has left the university.

In addition to competitive cheer, Maryland has targeted seven other teams for elimination: all three men’s track teams, men’s swimming and diving, women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis and women’s water polo.

Like the others, acro was told by the Terps’ current athletic director, Kevin Anderson, that it could save itself by raising eight years of operating costs by June 30. That’s $5.28 million — “just an astronomical number,” said Chiriaco, whose athletes have thrown themselves into the task nonetheless.

So far, they have raised $5,221 — or 0.1 percent of the goal. But they’re still trying, determined to stay together next season even if it’s as a dues-paying club.

“We have built this family, and it’s disappointing to see that it’s going to end,” said Shannon, 22. “But we can look back and say we did accomplish something and we did make a statement for women’s sports. We did something great.”