Cheerleading Trivia
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50 free Cheerleading trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Cheerleading trivia questions with answers. Cheer trivia for squads, coaches, cheer parents and anyone who has ever hit a herkie. This quiz covers the whole sport: the first cheerleader at Minnesota in 1898, why the activity started out all-male, the SMU cheerleader who invented a jump and patented the pom-pom, and how a private company came to run most of American competitive cheer. It also covers what you actually do on the mat: flyers, bases and spotters, the basket toss ban, the injury statistics that made cheer a safety story, the road to Olympic recognition, and the pop culture that carried it around the world, from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and Bring It On to Netflix's Cheer and Navarro College. Questions run from easy to expert and every one is labelled by difficulty. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who is credited as the first cheerleader, leading a University of Minnesota crowd in 1898?
Johnny Campbell
November 2, 1898 is treated as the official birthday of organized cheerleading, and Minnesota's yell squad still uses his original 'Ski-u-mah' cheer.
Q 02Organized cheerleading began in the US as what kind of activity?
All-male
Princeton had a documented 'Princeton Cheer' by 1877, and Minnesota's first squad was six male 'yell leaders'.
Q 03The University of Minnesota first allowed women to cheer in which year?
1923
Other schools were slow to follow, and women only really took over in the 1940s when college men were drafted for World War II.
Q 04Which chant from the 1869 Princeton-Rutgers game, the first college football game, is remembered in cheer history?
Sis Boom Rah!
British students had begun cheering in unison in the 1860s and the habit crossed the Atlantic.
Q 05Gamma Sigma, founded in 1903, was the first what?
Cheerleading fraternity
In the late 1920s school manuals still called cheerleaders 'chap', 'fellow' and 'man'.
Q 06Which cheerleading jump did Lawrence Herkimer invent by accident while trying to do a split jump?
The herkie
One arm goes straight up, the other on the hip, one leg out and the other bent back; he also received a patent for the pom-pom.
Q 07Herkimer's first cheerleading camp, at Sam Houston State in 1948, had how many participants?
53
He funded it with $600 borrowed from a friend of his father-in-law; a year later 350 signed up, and he soon quit teaching to run camps full-time.
Q 08Herkimer's original 1968 pom-pom patent said the invention was made from what?
Crepe paper
He called it a 'pom-pon'; modern ones are plastic or mylar, and the word comes from the French pompon for a decorative tuft.
Q 09Which company, founded by Jeff Webb in 1974 as the Universal Cheerleaders Association, dominates cheer camps?
Varsity Spirit
Webb, a former Oklahoma yell leader, had tried and failed to buy into Herkimer's NCA; his company later faced antitrust suits over its control of the sport.
Q 10Which network's 1978 Collegiate Cheerleading Championships broadcast introduced America to competitive cheer?
CBS
The 1980s then brought hard stunt sequences and gymnastics into routines, and the first all-star teams appeared.
Q 11In which year did the NCA's 'All-Star Division' for teams without a school debut?
1987
The USASF later hosted the first Cheerleading Worlds in April 2004, staged at Walt Disney World.
Q 12Where is the annual Cheerleading Worlds competition held?
Disney World, Orlando
The NCA's college nationals, the event chased in Netflix's Cheer, are in Daytona Beach instead.
Q 13In a cheer stunt, what is the person on top called?
The flyer
One or two bases hold from below and spotters stand front and back; 96 percent of cheer concussions are stunt-related.
Q 21Which New York choreographer was hired in 1972 to audition and train an all-adult Cowboys Cheerleaders squad?
Texie Waterman
The idea traces to GM Tex Schramm noticing the crowd's reaction to short-skirted performer Bubbles Cash at a 1967 game.
Q 22The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were first widely seen by a national audience at which game in 1976?
Super Bowl X
A made-for-TV movie about them starring Jane Seymour drew a 48 percent share of the audience in 1979.
Q 23The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' reality show Making the Team ran for 16 seasons on which channel?
CMT
Director Kelli Finglass, herself a DCC from 1984 to 1989, was executive producer.
Q 14A basket toss uses how many bases at minimum to throw a flyer into the air?
Three
Two of the bases interlock their hands, and the flyer performs a jump such as a toe touch before landing back in a cradle.
Q 15In 2006 college cheer safety rules banned basket tosses and pyramids of what height?
Two and a half levels or higher
The changes followed Southern Illinois cheerleader Kristi Yamaoka's fall from a pyramid, which fractured a vertebra.
Q 16A 2011 study found cheerleading caused roughly what share of catastrophic injuries in US female sports?
65%
Most of those injuries come from stunting and pyramids; the most common cheer injury overall is concussion.
Q 17As of 2005, roughly what percentage of all cheerleading participants were female?
97%
At college level it is nearly 50-50, with male stunts leaning on tumbling and strength rather than flexibility.
Q 18Napoleon Jinnies and Quinton Peron made NFL history in 2019 by becoming the first what?
Male cheerleaders at a Super Bowl
The first recorded NFL cheer squad had been the Baltimore Colts' in the 1950s.
Q 19Which team had the first recorded cheer squad in NFL history?
The Baltimore Colts
Professional cheerleading began in the 1950s, decades before the Cowboys' squad debuted.
Q 20The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are officially nicknamed what?
America's Sweethearts
In the 1970s they were often called the Dallas Cowgirls, and a 2024 Netflix series took the nickname as its title.
Q 24Which future pop star and choreographer was discovered while performing as a Laker Girl?
Paula Abdul
The Jacksons hired her to choreograph the 'Torture' video; owner Jerry Buss had created the squad in 1979 as part of his 'Showtime' vision.
Q 25In Bring It On (2000), the Toros discover their routines were stolen from which rival team?
The East Compton Clovers
Gabrielle Union plays Clovers captain Isis; the film opened at number one and grossed about $90 million.
Q 26Bring It On was the theatrical directing debut of which filmmaker, later known for Ant-Man?
Peyton Reed
Jessica Bendinger wrote it, and six direct-to-video sequels followed without any of the original cast.
Q 27The Broadway musical version of Bring It On had music by Tom Kitt and which Hamilton creator?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
It premiered in Atlanta in 2011 and ran at the St. James Theatre in late 2012.
Q 28Netflix's docuseries Cheer follows the squad of which Texas two-year school in Corsicana?
Navarro
The Corsicana school's coach Monica Aldama has led the Bulldogs to 16 NCA junior college titles since 2000.
Q 29Where is the NCA national championship that the Cheer squad chases each season held?
Daytona Beach, Florida
Director Greg Whiteley found the sport while making his football series Last Chance U.
Q 30Which governing body, founded 2004, gained full IOC recognition at the July 2021 Tokyo session?
The ICU
It claims 116 member federations, which opens a path, though not a guarantee, to future Olympic inclusion.