ESPN first broadcast national student cheerleading competitions worldwide in 1983. Cheerleading organizations such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors (AACCA) began demanding safety rules and standards for cheerleaders, to decrease the number of injuries and prevent the preparation of excessively dangerous choreographies, such as the famous human pyramids. In 2003, the National Council for Spirit Safety and Education (NCSSE) was founded to offer athletes safe training standards that coaches must adhere to.
Currently, cheerleading is primarily associated with American football and basketball, while sports such as football, ice hockey, baseball or wrestling only occasionally sponsor cheerleading teams. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international event to have cheerleading teams.
ASICheerleading was born with the intention of promoting, organizing, disciplining and disseminating the activity of Cheerleading in Italy following the indications and dictates of the relevant International Federations. Sport Cheerleading is divided into two disciplines, Cheerleading and Performance Cheer, was born in the United States in 1880. Cheerleading lett. directing the fans, or rather, encouragement) is the Anglo-American term for a sport that combines choreography composed of elements of gymnastics, dance and acrobatics, to compete in specific competitions and to encourage teams on the playing field, during matches. The athlete who practices cheerleading at a competitive level is called "cheerleader" from English, and "pompon girl or boy" in Italian; the athlete who performs choreography before, during and after the games of other teams is called "dance brackets". With over one and a half million participants (excluding the millions of school and college athletes), cheerleading is, according to Newsweek magazine, one of the most popular sports in the United States. The first cheerleading demonstrations began to appear spontaneously in the United States, in the late 1880s, when during some games the audience sang together to cheer their teams. The first known case dates back to 1894 at Princeton University. November 2, 1898 is reported as the birth day of organized cheerleading, when student Johnny Campbell directed the cheering of the public. Shortly after, the University of Minnesota organized a team of six male students, who continued to use Campbell's choirs. In 1903 the first "Gamma Sigma" cheerleading organization was born. Cheerleading therefore began as a purely male activity, but from 1923 women also began to enter cheerleading teams. Nowadays it is estimated that 97% of cheerleaders are female. In 1948 the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) was born, while from the sixties the National Football League (NFL) began to organize organized cheerleading teams, "official" supporters of the various teams. The Baltimore Colts (currently Indianapolis Colts) were the first NFL team to have their own cheerleading team. From the mid-seventies the image of cheerleaders (already in those years almost exclusively women) changed radically, following the example set by the Dallas Cowboys support team. In the eighties the cheerleader uniforms became extremely skimpy and the choreography, more and more elaborate, was joined by gymnastic steps and stuntman acrobatics.
