Dangers of Cheerleading

(source:http://www.genyration.com)

The risk of cheerleading was highlighted when Kristi Yamaoka, a cheerleader for Southern Illinois University, suffered from a fractured vertebra after she hit her head after falling from a human pyramid. She also suffered from a concussion, and a bruised lung. The fall occurred when Yamaoka lost her balance during a basketball game between Southern Illinois University and Bradley University at the Savvis Center in St. Louis on March 5, 2006.The fall gained "national attention", because Yamaoka continued to perform from a stretcher as she was moved away from the game. The cheerleader has since made a full recovery.

The accident caused the Missouri Valley Conference to ban its member schools from allowing cheerleaders to be "launched or tossed and from taking part in formations higher than two levels" for one week during a women's basketball conference tournament, and also resulted in a recommendation by the NCAA that conferences and tournaments do not allow pyramids two and one half levels high or higher, and a stunt known as basket tosses, during the rest of the men's and women's basketball season. On July 11, 2006, the bans were made permanent by the AACCA rules committee:

The committee unanimously voted for sweeping revisions to cheerleading safety rules, the most major of which restricts specific upper-level skills during basketball games. Basket tosses, 2½ high pyramids, one-arm stunts, stunts that involve twisting or flipping, and twisting tumbling skills may only be performed during halftime and post-game on a matted surface and are prohibited during game play or time-outs.

However, there have been far worse catastrophes in the world of cheerleading. Last October,[clarification needed] at Los Angeles' John Marshall High School, 17 year-old Patty Phommanyvong became a comatose quadriplegic as the result of a fall to the ground. Eighteen year-old Jessica Smith suffered a fractured back and neck after hitting the ground during practice at Sacramento City College in California. Most tragically, 20 year-old Lauren Chang died in April 2008 from being kicked in the chest at a cheerleading competition in Worcester, Massachusetts. There was also the 2005 case of Ashley Burns who, at 14 years old, ruptured her spleen. This occurred when she landed stomach down while practicing an airborne spin with her high school cheerleading squad.

Out of the nation's 2.9 million female high school athletes, only 3% are cheerleaders, yet cheerleading accounts for 65% of all catastrophic injuries in girls' high school athletics. Since the NCAA has yet to recognize cheerleading as an official college sport, there are no solid numbers on college cheerleading, yet when it comes to injuries, 67% of female athlete injuries at the college level are due to cheerleading mishaps.

Cheerleading is now considered one of the most dangerous school activities. The main source of injuries comes from stunting, also known as pyramids. These stunts are performed at games and pep rallies, as well as competitions. Sometimes competition routines are focused solely around the use of difficult and risky stunts. These stunts usually include a flier (the girl on top), along with one, two, three, or four bases (the girls or boys on the bottom). The most common cheerleading related injuries are: back injuries, sprained ankles, head injuries (sometimes concussions), broken arms, elbow injuries, and knee injuries.

The Pediatrics journal reported that the number of cheerleaders suffering from broken bones, concussions, and sprains has increased by over 100 percent between the years of 1990 and 2002. In 2001 there were 25,000 hospital visits reported for cheerleading injuries dealing with the shoulder, ankle, head, and neck.

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The History of Cheerleading

Johnny Campbell
(source:Wikipedia.org)

Princeton graduate Thomas Peebles introduced the idea of organized crowds cheering at football games to the University of Minnesota. However, it was not until 1898 that University of Minnesota student Johnny Campbell directed a crowd in cheering "Rah, Rah, Rah! Sku-u-mar, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!”, making Campbell the very first cheerleader and November 2, 1898 the official birth date of organized cheerleading. Soon after, the University of Minnesota organized a "yell leader" squad of 6 male students, who still use Campbell's original cheer today In 1903 the first cheerleading fraternity, Gamma Sigma was founded. Cheerleading started out as an all-male activity, but females began participating in 1923, due to limited availability of female collegiate sports. At this time, gymnastics, tumbling, and megaphones were incorporated into popular cheers, and are still used today. Today it is estimated that 97% of cheerleading participants overall are female, but males still make up 50% of cheering squads at the collegiate level.

In 1948, Lawrence "Herkie" Herkimer, of Dallas, TX and a former cheerleader at Southern Methodist University formed the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) as a way to hold cheerleading clinics. In 1949, The NCA held its first clinic in Huntsville, TX with 52 girls in attendance. "Herkie" contributed many "firsts" to the sport including the founding of Cheerleader & Danz Team uniform supply company, inventing the herkie, (where one leg is bent towards the ground and the other is out to the side as high as it will stretch in the toe touch position) and creating the "Spirit Stick". By the 1960s, college cheerleaders began hosting workshops across the nation, teaching fundamental cheer skills to eager high school age girls. In 1965, Fred Gastoff invented the vinyl pom-pon and it was introduced into competitions by the International Cheerleading Foundation (now the World Cheerleading Association or WCA). Organized cheerleading competitions began to pop up with the first ranking of the "Top Ten College Cheerleading Squads" and "Cheerleader All America" awards given out by the International Cheerleading Foundation in 1967. In 1978, America was introduced to competitive cheerleading by the first broadcast of Collegiate Cheerleading Championships on CBS.

What was cheerleading like in the 1950's? Big skirts and big pompoms. Cheerleaders reached new heights in the 1950s. They became very popular because they thought it was a very exciting thing to support their male athletes in all sports. The way they were chosen was by the student body with their smiles or and the popularity. From the 1950s forward, cheerleading would continue to become more organized. Cheer clinics and camps were designed to train interested young people in the art of cheering. Originally springing from schools for team support, cheerleading teams began to branch out to semi-professional organizations competing in national competitions. Professional sports teams added line ups of gorgeous professional cheerleaders to draw even more fans to the games. Cheerleading had finally reached the big time with favorites like the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and the Laker Girls setting new trends in uniforms and cheer dances. Those trends continue to the present day. Cheerleading has become a multi-million dollar industry that shows no signs of slowing down. Here is a picture of what the cheerleading uniforms looked like in that popular era. And here is what that uniform has evolved into today.

In the 1960s National Football League (NFL) teams began to organize professional cheerleading teams. The Baltimore Colts (now the Indianapolis Colts) was the first NFL team to have an organized cheerleading squad. It was the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders who gained the spotlight with their revealing outfits and sophisticated dance moves, which debuted in the 1972-1973 season, but were first seen widely in Super Bowl X (1976). This caused the image of cheerleaders to permanently change, with many other NFL teams emulating them. Most of the professional teams' cheerleading squads would more accurately be described as dance teams by today's standards; as they rarely, if ever, actively encourage crowd noise or perform modern cheerleading moves.

The 1980s saw the onset of modern cheerleading with more difficult stunt sequences and gymnastics being incorporated into routines. ESPN first broadcasted the National High School Cheerleading Competition nationwide in 1983. Cheerleading organizations such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors (AACCA) started applying universal safety standards to decrease the number of injuries and prevent dangerous stunts, pyramids and tumbling passes from being included in routines. In 2003, the National Council for Spirit Safety and Education (NCSSE) was formed to offer safety training for youth, school, all star and college coaches. The NCAA requires college cheer coaches to successfully complete a nationally recognized safety-training program. The NCSSE or AACCA certification programs are both recognized by the NCAA.

Today, cheerleading is most closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as soccer, ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. The Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have cheerleaders. Debuting in 2003, the "Marlin Mermaids" gained national exposure and have influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads.

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Cheerleading Definition

(source: http://www.thelittlegym.com)

Cheerleading, a sport that requires physical fitness, flexibility, coordination and hard work, uses organized routines made from elements of tumbling, dance, jumps and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer on sports teams at games and matches and/or compete at cheerleading competitions. The athlete involved is called a cheerleader. With an estimated 1.5 million participants in all-star cheerleading (not including the millions more in high school, college or little league participants) in the United States alone, cheerleading is, according to Newsweek's Arian Campo-Flores, "the most quintessential of American sports." The growing presentation of the sport to a global audience has been led by the 1997 start of broadcasts of cheerleading competition by ESPN International and the worldwide release of the 2000 film Bring it On. Due in part to this recent exposure, there are now an estimated 100,000 participants scattered around the rest of the world in countries including Australia, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

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