As far as the move from activities to sports, within each school, this should make little difference, depending on how adept the school's athletic director handles taking on a new program and dealing with its personnel, as the cheer and dance programs should have its funding tied to its status as a sport.The funding just needs to be rerouted to athletics, and the administrative duties might need some reassigning.

The gender message is a bigger one I'm not going to debate here, but if re-categorizing cheer and dance suddenly makes a few dozen girls athletes by definition, then I'm for it. What will really establish cheerleading as a sport, and help its participants gain more credibility as athletes, is an identity separate from the sports that helped make them famous.

The NMAA, at another recent meeting, discussed the possibility of halftime competitions during the state basketball tournament and the idea of regular cheer contests between junior varsity and varsity hoops games.

Forget the fact there really can only be 10 minutes between state tournament games in the current arrangement at the Pit in Albuquerque, or that once a Class B hoops classification begins in 2010-11, how that schedule will become even more precarious. Forget how much time already elapses between JV and varsity games, with the 15 minutes athletes need for whatever reason after someone actually starts the warm-up clock.

No, trying to wedge competitive cheer into someone else's sport schedule would not only drag out a format that already has too many built-in delays, but it also delays the inevitable. Cheer and dance will really begin to flourish once they have their own regular competitions, apart from basketball, football or any other sport.

Soccer really began to take off in America in the 1980s, and while it was never really attached to other sporting events, teams used football fields for years. Watch some old footage of the New York Cosmos of the NASL trying to play on the turf of Giants Stadium, and that's kind of where cheer is stuck now, in a venue it has outgrown.

Sure, the state spirit competitions are performed in basketball arenas, but the basketball goals are gone and there are extra safety personnel, a pre-determined background, and overall, a better setup for competing. That's what cheer could have every week.

If the quantities of screaming fans I've seen at the state spirit competition is any indication, cheer and dance could easily draw people to their own events. Cheerleading may have initiated along the sidelines of other sports, but it doesn't need to limit itself to those nights of the week when there's a ballgame.

I know lots of fans look forward to seeing cheerleaders encouraging athletic teams, being a part of an established, traditional schedule in sports like hoops and football. Even folks that aren't related to a cheerleader or have a friend on the squad probably view cheerleaders as fixtures on the American sports landscape.

There's no reason this needs to change. Cheerleading duals could happen any night of the week the local gym isn't in use, with, say, Eldorado, La Cueva or Rio Rancho coming to a Valencia County school, and competing in front of a small panel of judges. If the judging were similar to state, there wouldn't even have to be a clear-cut winner and loser, as one team might win for dance-drill, and the other for cheer.

I know my idea costs money and might involve some radical departures from the traditional season, but it mostly might just mean shuffling money differently and being flexible about the months of the year for cheer competition.

Los Lunas cheer advisor Jaime Wilson said that in 2009-10, the Tiger cheerleaders went to a prominent Texas A&M camp in July and two competitions in December (UNM Spirit & UCA Regionals), plus football and soccer in the fall and basketball season. Surely there would be a few extra dollars and personnel for two or three duals against top squads.

No youth sport grew entirely on its own. It usually takes a few adults making some bold moves to get things rolling.