I KNOW not being into sport borders on being un-Australian, but that’s me.

I’m not a sports enthusiast; neither is my other half. Both of us have about as much interest in sport as a fish might have watching sushi preparation.

Although it may not be our thing, we do everything we can to encourage our sport and dance-mad 5½-year-old daughter and, between the two of our children, we dutifully go off to weekly swimming, ballet, trampolining, acrobatics and gymnastics.

I have to admit, when she announced she wanted to take up cheer leading, I didn’t exactly rush out to buy pom poms.

I waited, hopeful that within a week she might forget the idea and move on to something else.

But she nagged, she begged, she bargained.

She tried to teach herself. She constructed her own pom poms from tissues and sticky tape and would leap at me off the top of the couch, sometimes landing on the back of her Nintendo-playing brother and causing massive family chaos.

She did the splits constantly in shopping centres for the entertainment of passers-by and practised cartwheels and various cheers about how wonderful cheer leading would be if only her mum would let her go.

I have to admit to a few negative preconceptions about cheer leading. I was nervous enough about ballet after a girl I knew growing up went way too far down the eating-disorder path in pursuit of her ballet dream.

And I was inclined to view cheer-leading stereotypes fairly negatively as scantily dressed young girls put out on the footy field for a bit of titillation during half-time. But my daughter is nothing if not persistent and got her way.

Of course, the reality proved quite different from what I had imagined.

Cheer leading, which is increasing recognised in Australia as a competitive sport in its own right, actually combines a number of my daughter’s favourite activities such as dance, gymnastics and acrobatic skills. Even for five-year-olds practice sessions are a serious business, with talented young things working their pom poms off to perform really clever routines. And they just love it. It’s a huge amount of fun.

I guess it’s like anything else in life, it’s all about a bit of balance which is why, when my daughter announced she wished from now on to be known as “Sparkles”, I did a bit of a double take. That is until she added, with her mischievous grin, that her real secret name would always remain “Doctor Evil”. Now it has to be wrong doesn’t it, that I felt a sense of relief about that?