HARTFORD, Conn. >> A federal judge in Connecticut has again ruled that competitive cheerleading is not a sport, and Quinnipiac University remains under an injunction that requires the school to keep its women’s volleyball team.

Several volleyball players and their coach successfully sued the university in 2009 after it announced it would eliminate volleyball for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad. The judge issued the injunction at that time.

On Monday, the judge ruled that upgrades to cheerleading — now called acrobatics and tumbling — still do not make it a sport, and said that even with the addition of a women’s rugby team, the school must keep volleyball out of Title IX restraints that ban sex discrimination in federally funded school programs, including sports.