In Daytona Beach, Fla., the Terrapin competitive cheerleading team has achieved celebrity status, at least among the sport’s faithful. Fans approach members of the team on the street and ask for photos and autographs. Those donning Terp apparel are celebrated as heroes in the town that hosts the National Cheerleaders Association national championship each year.

In College Park, rather than congratulations for the fourth NCA title in five years the Terps clinched Friday, some question the legitimacy of the sport. Most are either unaware of the Terps’ dominance or simply ignore it.

“I wish I could get the University of Maryland down to Daytona,” coach Jarnell Bonds said. “I think every Maryland student and Terp fan would feel proud to walk around with a Maryland shirt on. We try to describe it to everybody, but there’s nothing like it in our world.”

The Terps edged out defending champion Louisville in the tightest national championship contest in the competition’s 22-year history, topping the defending champion Cardinals by .021 of a point thanks to their performance in Friday’s final round.

It was a deduction-free final routine and earned the highest “crowd appeal” score.

In addition to the All-Girl I Cheer championship, the Terps were named the grand national champions of the event, meaning they had the highest score of any subdivision, including co-ed and male sections. It marks the first time an all-female team has received the award.

“I had the utmost confidence in this routine,” Bonds said. “It’s the most difficult routine we’ve put on the floor, so for them to be able to win with the difficulty and the execution that they showed was amazing.”

Despite the Terps’ run, the sport mostly goes unnoticed on the campus — a fact that bothers Bonds and the cheerleaders only to some extent. They said the appreciation of those in the cheerleading community is enough gratification for them.

“When they walk anywhere around in the cheer world with a Maryland shirt on, they are praised; they are hailed,” Bonds said. “They are royalty. They get Facebook fan pages made for them.”

But the cheerleading world and College Park rarely collide.

“I would love for our world to be part of the College Park world,” Bonds said. “Everyone here is a national champion, and [fans will] cheer for them when we walk out at halftime at a basketball game or when we walk out at halftime at a football game. But I would love for them to be standout athletes just like Greivis [Vasquez] and Jordan Williams.”

Bonds knows making competitive cheerleading into a typical collegiate sport is a lofty goal — something she is sure many other non-revenue sports would like to achieve.

“It’s part of being a sport that’s not football or basketball,” Bonds said.

But that doesn’t stop the Terps from trying.

The competitive cheerleading team achieved varsity status in 2003, the first competitive cheer team in the country to do so. While competing against other competitive cheerleading squads that had not obtained the luxury of scholarships, the Terps took home three straight NCA championships from 2006 to 2008.

Oregon, Quinnipiac, Fairmont State and Morgan State joined the Terps at the varsity level in 2009 and Baylor came to the table in 2010. The Bears brought the varsity count to six, four short of the 10 required to receive emerging sport status from the NCAA, according to Bonds.

While the Terps and competitive cheer programs across the country still strive to add an extra ‘A’ to the governing body that oversees them, the team insists that it in no way takes away from the sport.

“That was their national championship,” Bonds said of NCA nationals. “It’s where all the colleges are going in the nation when they compete at nationals, so that was their championship. Would it feel better to win or any different to win a NCAA championship? As long as they’re beating the best teams out there, the feeling is going to be exactly the same.”

Though the Terps don’t need it to legitimize what they do, they know it would be a major milestone for the sport as a whole. The NCA title is an achievement they are extremely proud of, but leading the change to NCAA recognition would be a major achievement for the sport.

“To be an NCAA sport would just be amazing,” flyer Tricia Fitzgerald said. “It would mean success; it would mean that the country and the athletics industry would begin to respect our sport and what we dedicate our lives to do.”

Bonds said the poor economic climate in college athletics likely makes the prospect of schools adding competitive cheer to their varsity repertoire difficult. But once the financial situations of athletics departments across the nation improve, Bonds believes the sport has taken required measures to promote growth to the NCAA level.

This year, the Terps took to the floor with numbers and last names on the back of their uniforms to promote a more mainstream feel. On top of the aesthetic changes, the NCA rolled out a new form of competition.

“We’ve created a meet format where we go head-to-head with another school five rounds, just like a gymnastics meet in different aspects,” Bonds said. “We broke our sport apart — we really created an evolution of what was already a sport to make it a longer event. We utilize the scoreboard. We go back and fourth.”

When the legitimacy of competitive cheer as a sport is questioned, the Terps are quick to defend themselves.

“I think that anyone that says cheerleading isn’t a sport doesn’t see what we do,” co-captain Lauren Louis said. “There’s never been a person who came to watch us perform or came to one of our practices whose opinion wasn’t switched instantly. We work hard; we work out six days a week. We do the same lifting and conditioning schedule as every other sport team on this campus. It’s only a matter of them seeing it before their mind can get changed.”

The Terps hope to achieve NCAA status within the next few years. Until then, they’ll keep trying to dominate at the NCA level.

“The longer we exist at Maryland, the more championships we’ll win, the more people will come to our meets, and we will get more celebration,” Bonds said. “But those who know us treat us the same way they would if basketball or football won four national titles in five years.”

schneider@umdbk.com