Cheerleading As A Sport: Strengths And Risks

Cheerleading has long been considered to be an exciting activity that helps raise school unity by leading crowds of students and supporters at athletic functions. It involves performing a lot of technical skills in tumbling, tossing, and many other stunts, which draw the crowd's attention to get them cheering for their teams. While pom-pom girls focus on dance choreography, cheerleaders do more gymnastics and dangerous acrobatics, which require a lot of skills.

Cheerleading is Not Just an Athletic Activity

Lately, coaches, teachers, and health providers have been strongly advocating that cheerleading be considered as an official sport, and not just an athletic activity in school. Although some people think that cheering and dancing is an activity limited to students who are popular and talented, cheerleading has evolved over the last few decades to become a more athletic skill that requires strength, agility, grace and precision. It involves complex maneuvers, such as jumping, tumbling, pyramid formations and partner stunts that challenge normal body limits.

This advocacy aims to recognize cheerleading as an official sport in order to afford cheerleaders more protection and safety. These organizations recommend giving participants access to athletic trainers and certified coaches, not just teachers or untrained school personnel, to work with them during practices and competitions. They also recommend providing cheerleaders with quality training facilities, medical care, mandated preseason physicals, and strength and conditioning programs. As a sport, therefore, cheerleading teams will have a share of the funding and finite resources of an institution's athletic department.

These recommendations are based on findings that cheerleading fulfills every condition that makes physical activities fall under the definition of a sport. The Women's Sports Foundation recently filed a position paper, which shows that cheerleading is a sport activity, according to criteria defining a sport. Aside from these, health and safety advocates also cite that cheerleading involves safety issues that need serious attention, considering that about 37,000 visits to the emergency room were recorded in 2011 due to injuries related to the activity.

Cheerleading, a Risky Sport

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported that in 2011, thousand of injuries occurred, involving cheerleaders ages six to 22. It has been observed that the number of injuries have increased over the last few decades, as cheerleading has become more popular. Recent data show that there are more than 3 million cheerleaders in the US, mostly girls, including about 400,000 high school students.

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However, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program found that about a quarter of claims from student-athletes resulted from injuries related to cheerleading. Although there are only about 12 cheerleaders for every one hundred football players, the number of injuries reported rank second to those related to football. Furthermore, the rate of serious injuries such as head and brain injuries, as well as spine injuries that result in temporary memory loss and permanent paralysis have been reported to be the highest among cheerleaders.

Why Many Schools Still Do Not Consider Cheerleading As A Sport

Many schools still do not consider cheerleading as a sport because competing against other teams is voluntary and sometimes not the priorityof the activity.

However, in recent years, cheerleading has evolved into a sport with the primary purpose of competing against other teams within a structure that is comparable to other athletic activities.

It is sad to note, however, that the US courts have not ruled in favor of cheerleading being considered a sport, so that in some schools, it cannot enjoy the same benefits as other sports in terms of sharing the budget for training, facilities and medical provisions. In spite of Title IX, which ensures the availability of equal funding for female athletics, athletic departments of some colleges find it difficult to comply, because they still do not consider the predominantly female activity a sport.

Making Cheerleading Safer

The most important reason why cheerleading must be considered a sport is so that it can be made safer, by regulating training practices and competitions, and by making facilities, training programs and medical assistance more available.

As a result, participants may perform complex stunts with little skill to stay safe. Furthermore, cheerleading organizations do not have standardized regulations and restrictions in performing dangerous stunts.

To improve the safety of cheerleading, the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors, together with the National Federation of State High School Associations have developed certain rules and recommendations. These include requiring training and certification of cheerleading coaches and developing proper strength and body conditioning for cheerleaders. In addition, tumbling and doing dangerous stunts on hard surfaces must be avoided. They also recommend specific rules for performing various skills.

Another advocate, the American Academy of Pediatrics also advise that training in executing proper spotting techniques must be done and that stunts must be attempted only after skill progression is demonstrated. They emphasize that highly technical skills such as mounts, pyramids, tumbling and tosses should no be done on hard, uneven or wet surfaces. Human pyramids must be limited to just two people.

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However, this may endanger their health. It is therefore important to have a doctor or a certified trainer present during training and competitions. A written plan to be followed during emergencies must be available to athletes, parents and coaches. They must know how to handle concussions, and any cheerleader who experiences a head injury must not be allowed to return to practices or competitions without medical clearance from a health provider.

Proper documentation and reporting of all catastrophic injuries related to cheerleading must be reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.