The Fresno City Rams cheerleading team are fighting a commonly held misconception that cheerleading is not a sport. The girls are confident in their assertion that they are equal to other sports teams on the FCC campus.

The girls on the team have been cheering for more than a couple of years and say they love the training and giving support to the sport teams who play for the college, but that at times, things can get overwhelming

“It’s pretty challenging,” freshman Sydney Robinson. “I’m sore and it’s only tryouts.” But sophomore Sarina Flores disagrees, “It’s not difficult; you just have to put a lot of effort into it.”

What the girls on the team agree on is that all the negativity that gets thrown at them is demeaning. People would make the statement without hesitation that “cheer isn’t a sport” or that “a sport can’t cheer for another sport.”

Flores insists, “It’s a sport like every other sport, and we practice just as much; we travel and get hurt.”

Robinson said cheer is “most definitely a sport; we have to keep our GPA over a 2.5 and why would you not consider it a sport?”

People do not consider it a sport because of the hours and hard conditions that other sport teams have which the cheer team doesn’t. Some would argue that the FCC football or baseball team runs more and has more physical requirements than cheer does.

“I feel discouraged because we do more than half the other sport teams,” said Sarina Flores.

“I feel offended, show some respect, we have just as many altercations as football or softball or baseball,” Robinson said.

The cheer team is adamant that they are just as equal as the other sports on campus. They are compassionate about what they do and love to give support to the sport teams on game day.

Robinson said, “There’s a lot of similarities when you actually get down to the nitty-gritty part of it.”