CHEERS AND FEARS
It’s dangerous at the top of the pyramid. New research and shocking stories expose cheerleading’s startlingly high concussion risk
TOO! Aggressive! Too, too aggressive!
When it comes to risking your neck — and head — cheerleading practice is almost as bad as football.
A new report published in the medical journal Pediatrics looked at athletes’ concussion rates in practice and competition in high-school sports. Football, no surprise, topped out the list of the most concussions sustained during practice — but cheerleading came in second, beating out contact sports like lacrosse and hockey.
The perils of pompom-waving have also been in the news, with student Melissa Martin suing the University of California at Berkeley and its cheerleading coaches over head injuries.
The 23-year-old, who cheered in the 2017-18 season, alleges that she was “bullied” by coaches into continuing to cheer despite suffering from numerous concussions. In the complaint, she claims that she was not given appropriate medical attention, has been in “constant pain” ever since and continues to experience “headaches, nausea, confusion and light sensitivity.”
Her attorney, Jennie Lee Anderson, knows that stories like this can seem shocking, given cheerleading’s girlie reputation.
“While there has been a lot of attention around concussion risks for young men in football, there has not been a corresponding level of concern about head injuries for young women participating in cheerleading programs,” she tells the Guardian.
And that’s the problem in a nutshell, says Dr. Dennis Cardone, co-director of NYU Langone’s Sport Health Concussion Center.
“We have seen some evidence that female athletes may take longer to recover from head injuries than male athletes,” Cardone tells The Post. That difference matters in a sport where, according to a 2018 report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, 78 percent of participants are female.
It’s also problematic that cheerleading isn’t considered a legitimate athletic endeavor across the board.
“In some school districts around the country, cheerleading may not be recognized as a sport and therefore doesn’t have the same resources on
hand,” says Cardone. The doctor, who treats numerous cheerrelated injuries during the school year, thinks cheerleading’s semisport status means that there “may not be proper trainers on hand during practices.”
Avinash Chandran, co-author of the high-school sports study, reached a similar conclusion, noting that cheer squads practice in varied locations — from football fields to hallways to gymnasiums — that may not always be outfitted with the proper safety equipment for, say, training for new, high-flying stunts.
Such systemic oversights are disturbing to Martin. Although she declined to discuss the specifics of her ongoing suit with The Post, she stressed how important it is, “before joining a team or a sport, to ask questions like, ‘What is your safety protocol?’ . . . It’s important to get an understanding of the culture.”
Texan Kaitlyn Behnke has some insight on that front. The 25-yearold started cheerleading at the age of 6 and was on her highschool squad, a separate competitive team and eventually her college squad at the University of Texas at Austin. She sustained six cheerleading-related concussions before she quit the sport in her junior year — and says that most of her concussions occurred during practice, not competition.
“When I tell people my concussions are from cheerleading, people are so surprised. They don’t realize how intense competitive cheer is,” says Behnke, who graduated from UT Austin in 2017. “Everything has to be perfect . . . and that leads to an intensity in practice that other sports might not see.”
Behnke, who continues to suffer from anxiety and migraines so “intense” that she is unable to work full time, says it doesn’t matter whether you’re at the base of the pyramid or flying in the air: She’s sustained concussions both ways. On the ground, she got clocked in the head by someone’s foot. As a flyer, her head collided with someone’s shoulder.
Her first concussion happened in 2009, when she was on the base of a formation. She smacked her head on a basketball court, and “blacked out briefly,” she says. “I lost sight for a couple of minutes . . . I thought I couldn’t open my eyes, but [my coach told me after], ‘No, your eyes were open the whole time.’ ”
Concussions in youth and college sports are a concern across the country. In 2012, New York state mandated that all public school coaches be certified in concussion protocols and baseline testing. Any student suspected of a concussion must be off the field for at least 24 hours. USA Cheer’s current concussion protocol maintains, “When in doubt, sit them out, and keep them out!” And while Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley, couldn’t comment specifically on Martin’s lawsuit, he told The Post in a statement: “Cal Athletics closely follows the dictates of a comprehensive policy on concussion management. This policy includes essential elements of concussion education and protocols for management of concussion.”
All of this is progress, says Behnke. Back in her cheering days, “We did not do baseline concussion testing, and my school cheer [practices] did not have access to an athletic trainer.”
But she thinks such protocols don’t address the truest threat to serious cheerleaders’ safety: their own ambitions.
“Many times you just keep going, even after getting hit in the head, and pretend nothing happened because you don’t want to be replaced,” says Behnke. And when your high school plays under the Friday night lights in a stadium that seats 10,000 people, and your college is constantly vying for nationally televised championships, there’s always an understudy waiting to take your place.
“I mean, this is Texas football. The competition is intense,” she says. “I didn’t handle things properly because I didn’t want to miss a game.”
Today, she lives with the lasting consequences of the sport’s hardships. “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to climb the corporate ladder,” she says. “I’m still on health leave.” She expects to be “recovering forever.”
Still, she says she’s not done with life on the squad for good.
“Cheerleading was my lifelong identity,” Behnke says. “I miss it.
“I’m actually applying to cheerleading coaching jobs right now. I can’t wait.”
“When I tell people my concussions are from cheerleading, people are so surprised. They don’t realize how intense [it] is.” — Kaitlyn Behnke, 25, a former cheerleader at the University of Texas at Austin