10 Fundamentals About fhaloansapr.com You Didn't Learn in School
Whenever you go to a sporting event, no matter what sport or level, fans love to cheer for their favorite teams. This has been so as long as sporting events have taken place, but organized cheering (or cheerleading) dates back to 1898. Thomas Peebles brought cheering to the University of Minnesota from Princeton University, but student Johnny Campbell took it on and led the crowd in the organized cheer of "Rah, Rah, Rah! Sku-u-mar! Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Minn-e-so-tah!" His leading of the cheers at the game merited a write up in the November 12, 1898 edition of the "Ariel" stating that Campbell and the others leading the crowd in cheers would "see to it that everybody leaves the park today breathless and voiceless." Shortly after this game, an organized squad was formed at the University of Minnesota that consisted of six male students.
At the turn of the century, cheerleading as an organized activity or sport began to expand. By 1903 the first cheerleading fraternity, Gamma Sigma, was formed. In the 1920's women began to become active in cheerleading, because until about 1923 cheerleaders were only males. When women joined the ranks of cheerleaders, items like megaphones and acrobatic or gymnastic moves were added to the routines. The pom-pom (what some might consider the ultimate symbol of a cheerleader) was invented by Fred Gastoff in 1965.
The National Cheerleaders Association (or NCA) was formed in 1948 by Lawrence "Herkie" Herkimer, a former cheerleader for Southern Methodist University. He formed this association to hold clinics for cheerleaders, and the first clinic (held in 1949) consisted of 52 female participants. He also formed the Cheerleading Supply Company in 1953, which retailed skirts and sweaters for cheerleading teams and groups.
During the 1970's cheerleading gained a boost - a very glamorous boost - when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders became a recognized group with the trademark revealing blue and white uniforms and stylish dance moves. Professional football teams weren't the only ones with cheerleading squads - other sports such as basketball, baseball and hockey caught on to the popularity of cheering and created their own cheerleading squads for themselves.
In 1978 the first Collegiate Cheerleading Championship was aired on television on CBS, as competition among cheerleading squads began to grow. In the 1980's the cable sports network ESPN began to air the National High School Cheerleading Competition. As the popularity and love of the activity grew, so did the difficulty and complexity of the routines. Along with the increase in degree of difficulty of the routines came concerns for the safety of the participants. Most cheerleading organizations have adopted universal safety standards to help ensure the safety of the participants and decrease the number of injuries sustained.
In today's society, cheerleading is a big part of the American culture. There are movies that have made the sport of cheerleading popular (such as the Bring it On series of movies). Reality television programs have featured cheerleaders ("Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Making the Team" and the WE television reality program" Cheerleader Nation"). Serious fans can find video games about cheerleading for the Nintendo and Wii entertainment systems. Many of today's most popular figures were former cheerleaders - including President George W. Bush, Madonna, Paula Abdul and Vanna White.
Cheerleading remains very popular, with thousands of young men and women attending camps and clinics to learn the latest cheerleading routines and skills. There are estimates that 97% of the people involved in organized cheerleading today are female, but at the collegiate level the participation level for men and women is equal.
Gymnastics is a graceful and artistic sport that requires a combination of strength, balance, agility, and muscle coordination, usually performed on specialized apparatus. Gymnasts perform sequences of movements requiring flexibility, endurance, and kinesthetic awareness, such as handsprings, handstands, split leaps, aerials and cartwheels.
Gymnastics as we know it dates back to ancient Greece. The early Greeks practiced gymnastics to prepare for war. Activities like jumping, running, discus throwing, wrestling, and boxing helped develop the muscles needed for hand-to-hand combat. Additional fitness practices used by the ancient Greeks included methods for mounting and dismounting a horses and a variety of circus performance skills.
Gymnastics became a central component of ancient Greek education and was mandatory for all students. Gymnasia, buildings with open-air courts where the training took place, evolved into schools where gymnastics, rhetoric, music, and mathematics were taught. The ancinet Olympic Games were born near this time.
As the Roman Empire ascended, Greek gymnastics for was more or less turned into military training. In 393 AD the Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympic Games completely. The fhaloansapr games had become corrupt, and gymnastics, along with other sports declined. For centuries, gymnastics was all but forgotten.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries two pioneer physical educators, Johann Friedrich GutsMuth and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn created exercises for boys and young men on sseveral apparatus they had designed. This innovation ultimately led to what is considered modern gymnastics. As a result, Friedrich Jahn became known as the "father of gymnastics". Jahn introduced the horizontal bar, parallel bars, side horse with pommels, balance beam, ladder, and vaulting horse.
In the early nineteenth century, educators in the United States followed suit and adopted German and Swedish gymnastics training programs. By the early twentieth century, the armed services began publishing drill manuals featuring all manner of gymnastic exercises. According to the US Army Manual of Physical Drill, these important drills provided proper instruction for the bodies of active young men.
As time went by, however, military activity moved away from hand-to-hand combat and toward fighter planes and contemporary computer-controlled weapons. As a result of the development of modern warfare, gymnastics training as the mind and body connection, so important for the Greek, German, and Swedish educational traditions, began to lose force. Gymnastics once again took on the aura of being a competitive sport.
By the end of the nineteenth century, men's gymnastics was popular enough to be included in the first modern Olympic Games held in 1896. The sport was a little different from what we currently know as gymnastics however. Up until the early 1950s, both national and international competitions involved a changing variety of exercises the modern gymnast may find a bit odd such as synchronized team floor calisthenics, rope climbing, high jumping, running, and horizontal ladder just to name a few.
Women first started to participate in gymnastics events in the 1920s and the first women's Olympic competition was held in the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, although the only event was synchronized calisthenics. Combined exercises for women were first held in 1928, and the 1952 Olympics featured the first full regime of events for women.
By the 1954 Olympic Games apparatus and events for both men and women had been standardized in modern format, and scoring standards, including a point system from 1 to 10, were implemented.
Modern Men's gymnastics events are scored on an individual and team basis, and presently include the floor exercise, horizontal bar, parallel bars, rings, pommel horse, vaulting, and the all-around, which combines the scores of the other six events.
Women's gymnastic events include balance beam, uneven parallel bars, combined exercises, floor exercises, vaulting, and rhythmic sportive gymnastics.
Until 1972, gymnastics for men emphasized power and strength, while women performed routines focused on grace of movement. That year, however, a 17-year-old Soviet gymnast named Olga Korbut captivated a television audience with her innovative and explosive routines.
Nadia Comaneci received the first perfect score, at the 1976 Olympic Games held in Montreal, Canada. She was coached by the famous Romanian, Bela Karolyi. Comaneci scored four of her perfect tens on the uneven bars, two on the balance beam and one in the floor exercise. Nadia will always be remembered as "a fourteen year old, ponytailed little girl" who showed the world that perfection could be achieved.
Mary Lou Retton became America's sweetheart with her two perfect scores and her gold medal in the All-Around competition in front of the home crowd in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
These days gymnastics is a household name and many children participate in gymnastics at one time or another as they grow up. Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci, and Mary Lou Retton, along with all those gymnasts since, have helped popularize women's competitive gymnastics, making it one of the most watched Olympic events. Both men's and women's gymnastics now attract considerable international interest, and excellent gymnasts can be found on every continent.
