Drills and Spills
As cheerleaders fly higher, injury rates rise and some falls are crippling, even fatal. New rules could help.
By Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek
It was a dream come true for Ashley Burns when the lithe 14-year-old with the blue-ribboned ponytail and squeaky voice learned in July that she’d landed a cherished spot on the varsity cheerleading squad at Medford Vocational-Technical High School in Massachusetts. To celebrate, she and a friend got pedicures and tooled around town in a convertible blasting their favorite tunes. One week after joining the team, Burns was at practice, preparing to perform a stunt called a “double down.” Held aloft by four cheerleaders gripping one of her feet, she was thrust into the air. But instead of completing two twists and landing on her back in her teammates’ arms, she landed hard on her stomach, rupturing her spleen. An hour later, she was pronounced dead. Her family was left with the scant consolation expressed by a former teammate on a Web memorial: “You left us doing something you and I both love.”
Supremely athletic and intensely competitive, modern cheerleading is far more dangerous than it was in the days of pom-poms and megaphones. A year-round pursuit whose popularity has grown thanks to an influx of gymnasts seeking greater exposure, it has evolved so quickly that the regulatory bodies in charge of preventing sports injuries have struggled to keep up. The numbers tell the tale: emergency-room visits for cheerleading injuries—often fractures, dislocations and sprains—jumped from 15,700 in 1994 to 28,400 in 2004, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Though much of that increase results from the growing number of cheerleaders nationwide—now estimated at about 1.5 million—there’s little doubt that riskier stunts have contributed as well. Even more troubling, catastrophic injuries—those involving severe skull or spinal damage—are also on the rise, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSI). Of the 101 such injuries among female high-school and college athletes between 1983 and 2004, the center reports, 55 percent resulted from cheerleading.
“Fliers” like Burns, who are flung into the air as they perform acrobatic moves, face the greatest risk. Injury rates are “exponentially higher for a flier than for a footballer,” says NCCSI’s Robert Cantu. Compounding the risks of injury, says Cantu, some inexperienced coaches allow—or encourage—cheerleaders to perform moves beyond their skill.
Some parents are lobbying for greater regulation. Pete Buczek—whose daughter Ashlee fractured her skull in a 2003 cheerleading injury (she has since recovered)—was able to get a law passed in Indiana this year that calls for the state to come up with new safety rules. But Susan Loomis, spirit-rules director for the National Federation of State High School Associations, says a rule book has been in place since 1987 and is updated annually. The problem, she says, is that the federation can’t force states to abide by those rules. Though about 20 states classify cheerleading as a sport—triggering strict requirements such as access to an athletic trainer—other states treat it as a more loosely governed “activity.” “No one can really agree on what we are or who we are,” Loomis says.
Confusion also prevails in the all-star cheerleading world. Composed of cheerleaders who perform solely at private competitions and have no connection to a school, all-star squads are unregulated. The result, until recently: a byzantine mess as different competitions enforced different rules and some permitted riskier moves, says Jim Chadwick of the U.S. All Star Federation. To create order, the all-star world united under USASF’s umbrella in March and established a uniform set of rules and competition levels.
College cheerleading is enduring its own safety crackdown. Faced with the prospect that cheerleaders could lose insurance coverage and end up grounded—nearly one quarter of its $12 million in catastrophic claims costs since 1998 were the result of cheerleading injuries—the NCAA announced a new requirement this summer: by August 2006, all cheerleading squads must be supervised by a safety-certified coach or adviser. College cheerleaders also face new limitations on moves.
The newly restrictive regime has roiled places like Louisville Cheer & Dance Co., the training gym for a stellar lineup of teams, from pee-wee all-stars to the University of Louisville squad. Among the college kids, disgruntlement reigns. “You work your whole cheer career to get elite skills,” says Ries Brooks, a freshman who turned down Harvard to join the Louisville team. “Then they change the rules.” Katie Wigginton, a high-school senior, has a more sanguine view of the all-star reforms. “If I’m competing, I want to be safe,” she says. Once, training as a flier, she landed on her head, spraining her neck. “That was enough to keep me on the ground,” she says. Tragically, Ashley Burns never got a second chance.
With Ben Whitford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
