Eye on cheering safety
Pediatricians group says guidelines needed to help reduce injuries
Cheerleaders can find plenty of technical advice for executing eye-popping mounts, tosses and twists, but more is needed to reduce the escalating number and severity of cheerleading injuries, a pediatricians group’s new policy statement says.
Among the group’s key recommendations: designating cheerleading as a sport so participants will be afforded the same safety benefits available to other athletes, from availability of qualified coaches and athletic trainers, to access to well-maintained practice facilities, to limits on the time allowed for practicing.
Twenty-nine state high school athletic associations recognize cheerleading as a sport and the NCAA does not include competitive cheerleading in its list of sponsored sports, says the statement, published in the November issue of Pediatrics and released Monday at the American Academy of Pediatrics conference in New Orleans.
“Cheerleading has evolved ... from being a sport where you cheer on your team and do some leaps and jumps to now involving very complex acrobatic stunts and gymnastic-type tumbling, as well as training year-round,” says pediatrics sports medicine specialist Cynthia LaBella, co-author of the AAP’s first guidelines on cheerleading safety.
In 2009, the National Federation of State High School Associations reported there were about 400,000 high school cheerleaders (96% of them girls), with about 123,000 on competitive cheer teams.
With more complex maneuvers and more participants, “we’re seeing increasing numbers of injuries and increasing rates of injuries,” says LaBella, associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
According to statistics cited in the policy statement:
uThere have been 26,000 cheer- leading injuries in the USA annually since 2007, an increase of 400% from 4,954 injuries in 1980.
uThe injury rate in high school cheerleading is lower than other high school girls sports (0.9 per 1,000 exposures, compared to 8.5 per 1,000 for gymnastics, for example), but cheerleading accounts for 66% of catastrophic injuries in high school female athletes over the past 25 years. (Catastrophic injuries can result in permanent brain injury, paralysis or death.)
Cheerleading concussion rates rose by 26% between 1998 and 2008 but were stable in other girls sports.
Fast- paced floor routines and physically demanding skills, including pyramid-building, lifting, tossing and catching athletes in the air, account for 42% to 60% of all injuries and 96% of all concussions.
Organizations including the NFHS and American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors have specific rules for executing technical skills safely, but additional efforts will add to safety, LaBella says.
Among the AAP’s other injury-prevention recommendations:
Mandatory preseason physicals and access to qualified strength and conditioning coaches.
Training in all spotting techniques and only trying stunts after demonstrating appropriate skill progressions.
Perform pyramid and partner stunts on a spring/foam floor or grass/turf only and limit pyramid heights to no more than two people.
Sideline cheerleaders suspected of having a head injury until cleared by a health professional.
“We want to encourage cheerleading, and we want to encourage cheerleaders to continue to participate,” LaBella says. “Overall, it’s a fairly safe sport. We’re concerned that the number of catastrophic injuries are so disproportionate to other sports.”