COLLEGE PARK -- Five years of stunting, weightlifting, competitions and curling irons have created this: the University of Maryland's competitive cheerleading team, one of the best in the country.

"I believe that because we are the first school to launch cheerleading as a varsity sport, we will always be a dynasty," coach Jarnell Bonds said. "We will always be the leaders in this."

Not to diminish the women's accomplishments, but Maryland also remains the nation's only cheerleading team to have varsity status. The Terps' competition at the nationals in April will be traditional spirit squads that spend most of their time cheering on other sports teams.

"I expected for myself, by the time I was a senior, to have all kinds of competitive cheer programs," said senior Laura Chiriaco, who plans to graduate this spring and has been with the team since its inception.

"I know it's going to take time, but I really do believe it's going to catch on. So many girls are involved with competitive cheerleading when they're younger."

University officials heard from other athletic departments after creating the varsity team in 2003, so they expected Maryland would be the first of many schools to make the move. And that would be followed, school officials figured, by the NCAA sanctioning - and conducting championships in - competitive cheerleading.

What Maryland might have underestimated, however, was the effect of Title IX, the federal gender-equality law.

"Here lies the issue: We've got to call a spade a spade," said Terri Lakowski, the Women's Sports Foundation's public policy officer. "If you're offering an activity and calling it a sport and counting it toward your Title IX numbers, then that means another real sport is not being offered in lieu of what is actually an activity."

Karen Morrison, the director of gender initiatives and student-athlete well-being at the NCAA, said, "I think the issue is an athletic department saying, 'Gee ... I want to count those women in my Title IX members,' but then kind of realizing those are not the women you'd be able to count if all you're doing is cheering for other teams."

Unlike traditional spirit squads, varsity competitive cheerleaders are not allowed to cheer at sporting events if they are to count toward a school's Title IX numbers. That means universities must create two separate cheer teams - as Maryland did - or forgo cheering at games entirely.

"The vast majority of the coaches are really not in favor of that," said Bill Boggs, senior vice president of educational alliances at Varsity Brands, a company that sells cheerleading clothes and runs training camps and competitions.

Boggs said most cheerleading coaches he speaks with prefer to focus on game support, with one or two competitions per year as a bonus for their teams.

"When you look at the 3,000-plus colleges and universities out there, so few of those have any desire whatsoever to create this competitive cheerleading team," Boggs said. "They do not have the coaching, funding, and more importantly, they do not have the desire."

That means Maryland is often the only team in its category at competitions. The team has won five of the six competitions it has participated in this season.

"I wish there were more teams that could compete against us all year-round," Chiriaco said. "The good thing about our team is we really focus on ourselves up until nationals. We understand that, so we do a really good job of setting our own goals, and we want to make each performance better than the last one for ourselves."

Maryland could have company soon, though. Oregon has said it will add varsity cheerleading in the fall.

Beyond that? Next month, Maryland plans to host an exhibition against Oregon and hold a panel discussion on competitive cheer for athletic administrators. Maryland has been forced into a leadership role.

Kathy Worthington, Maryland's senior associate athletic director, said, "I'm not sure why Varsity Brands hasn't jumped on the bandwagon as much as we thought they would."

Some have wondered whether the company does not want to yield its dominance in cheerleading to the NCAA. The National Cheerleaders Association - a Varsity Brands organization - oversees college competitive cheerleading.

Before competitive cheer can become an NCAA sport, it must achieve varsity status at 10 Division I schools.

Said Worthington: "What a lot of schools would like to do is take their current spirit squad, combine them, and have a combined spirit squad and competitive cheer team. Which we think is OK, and we've asked the Office of Civil Rights for direction on that."