Safety of cheerleading

Date: Sun Aug 17 7:32 PM, 2008

Safety of cheerleading

Date: Sun Aug 17 8:10 PM, 2008

Actually this issue has been covered extensively on this message board, but it never hurts to bring the issue up again. There was discussion about it not too long ago when a show highlighting the injuries in cheerleading aired on tv (can't remember which network). Certification of coaches is pretty much mandatory at all gyms now, and it's up to families to verify this before signing up.

Date: Mon Aug 18 2:18 PM, 2008

I know it has been brought up many times before, but this new study significantly increases the amount of serious injuries that occur in the sport. It is worse than was previously thought. Is there any kind of certification going on for coaches yet? I know there are alot of reputable gyms such as cheergyms.com that are more than qualified to coach higher level teams, but my thought is that about at least half the gyms have coaching trying to teach skills they aren't capable of teaching or pushing kids to try things that they shouldn't be doing.

Date: Mon Aug 18 2:48 PM, 2008

It should be noted that this statistic only relates to female sports injuries in high school and college. The rate for catastrophic injuries to males in football and other sports are higher than cheerleading injuries.

Much more can be done in schools to make cheerleading safer, however, articles like this tend to make schools eliminate cheerleading all together, or relegate it to sideline cheer only with no competitive aspect rather than increase the safety level of the sport by utilizing the equipment used by all-star cheerleading (i.e. spring floors, practice mats, etc.). Nobody would think of sending a football player out without the proper safety gear, yet cheerleaders are required to stunt and tumble on dirt tracks and basketball courts and compete on foam pads instead of spring floors. No wonder catastrophic injuries occur.

Parents, if your child is involved in high school or college cheer, get involved with the school to encourage them to get the proper equipment to ensure the safety of the cheerleaders and to keep cheer programs intact. It's only through involvement that these unsafe practices can be changed.

techeergirl · Member

all sports have a risk of injury. and injuries can occur even when the coaches are fully certified. but to prevent them, cheerleaders need to aware of how far they can push their bodies and how to use proper technique

Date: Mon Aug 18 4:55 PM, 2008

Anonymous wrote:

I know it has been brought up many times before, but this new study significantly increases the amount of serious injuries that occur in the sport. It is worse than was previously thought. Is there any kind of certification going on for coaches yet? I know there are alot of reputable gyms such as cheergyms.com that are more than qualified to coach higher level teams, but my thought is that about at least half the gyms have coaching trying to teach skills they aren't capable of teaching or pushing kids to try things that they shouldn't be doing.

Can you point us to this new study? Thanks. I'm sure there are gyms out there who have coaches that are not properly certified, but I believe the majority of all star gyms that have higher level teams do have certified coaches. This may not be true for youth and high school, or gyms that don't have level 5 teams, I really don't know. But I believe more parents are taking an active role than they have in previous years to make sure their child is getting the proper training.

Date: Mon Aug 18 5:20 PM, 2008

In my experience in both coaching and cheering (10 years) it's def the bases that take the brunt. We were actually taught to get ourselves hurt in order to save the flier. (Considering the extent to the fliers injuries could be much greater). I was under the impression that all coaches needed to be certified or atleast the Head Coaches, which in that case, stunting is not allowed without the Head at practice. There are a lot of schools that do not care about their cheerleading programs so they hire anyone meanwhile the actual team wants to advance and therefore are trying the hard stunts under ill prepared supervision. It's a tough situation. But injuries happen in all walks of life, not just cheerleading.

sassyandfabolous.blogspot.com

ACEDAD · GURU

Here's some good information:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-15-2008/0004868475&EDATE=

-- Edited by ACEDAD at 20:05, 2008-08-18

Date: Tue Aug 19 10:33 AM, 2008

I believe this is the article everyone is referring to:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080811200423.htm

Also, again note, this refers to high school and college female athletes only. Not private all-star programs.

Date: Tue Aug 19 3:36 PM, 2008

Ok - now it's on the front page of Yahoo!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080819/us_time/cheerleadingsriskylackofrules

Date: Sat Aug 23 5:37 PM, 2008

I just found this website that has information about injuries and tips for parents. More interesting though is an emergency plan for catastrophic injuries and the competition company can file the emergency plan with them and then parents can find out if the competition we are going to has one in place. There have been so many stories online about kids waiting too long for an ambulance. See for yourself at www.natiionalcheersafety.com