A new study released by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina explains that what all cheerleading organizations should do is realize that cheerleading has had injury related problems, and strict safety measures should be adopted to remedy the situation. While 54 million female athletes participated in high school sports between 1982 and 2008 sustaining 39 catastrophic injuries, during that same period cheerleading had 73.

According to Frederick O. Mueller Ph.D. lead author of the study “the most important statistic is that high school cheerleading accounts for 65.2% of all the catastrophic injuries to female athletes which emphasizes the importance of safety regulations.” He further adds, “The National Federation of State High School Associations and the NCAA should classify cheerleading as a sport which would place cheerleading under the same restrictions and safety rules as all other sports.”

Recently released for 2008, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System survey by the Consumer Products Safety Commission, emergency room visits among cheerleaders of all ages increased from 26,786 to 29,148, an 8.8% increase. Even more alarming are the emergency room visits for young cheerleaders thirteen years of age and under which have risen 110% since last year while listing injuries like a four year old with a cervical sprain, an injury you would normally see from a car accident.

“Our data has shown that forces involved in youth cheerleading falls from stunts can be greater than a hit in the NFL which can ultimately lead to the same type of catastrophic injuries,” Cynthia Bir Ph.D., Wayne State University Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Director of Research, Orthopaedic Surgery.

Currently there are no funds for athlete safety programs from the Federal to the State governments. Funding by the Federal Government to State Governments for the following is key to insure athlete safety and prevention of athlete endangerment and abuse.

• State Agencies for Health and Family Services and Health Departments must intervene for youth athletes by collecting athlete injury and athlete endangerment data, setting policies, initiating athlete prevention, awareness and education campaigns. Federal laws affecting state proceedings must be enacted and funding must be designated to states for implementation by Health and Family Services and Health Departments
• Athletes must be educated to report their endangerment and abuses to parents and authorities
• Coaches must be educated to stop mistreating athletes and provide adequate supervision and utilize standard and duty of care.
• Doctors must be educated to report suspected serious athlete endangerment, abuse and injury after recognition during the treatment of an athlete.
• Parents and athletes who sign a sports participation waiver must be educated to modify the sports participation waiver with their signature “provided there is adequate coaching supervision” or state governments must modify the sports participation waiver with new law.

Further compelling evidence of the need for Congressional intervention are the high profile wrongful death lawsuits of football player Max Gilpin and cheerleader Ashley Burns in which both cases allege athlete abuse.

Youth sport safety advocate and founder of CAPPAA, Michael B. Minix Sr. M.D. adds, “athletes do not forfeit their human rights once they step within the boundary lines of the court, field or any coached sports environment. Any direct or indirect endangerment of a child athlete by a coach resulting in serious injury is unlawful and doctors are required by law to report suspected abuse to the proper authorities.”

To learn more about athlete abuse and a physician duty to report suspected abuse  www.nationalcheersafety.com/physiciansduty.pdf and for more information on the NCSF Cheering for Safety Summer Campaign go to www.nationalcheersafety.com/summer.pdf. The NCSF panel of experts will be busy all summer implementing the new programs, researching critical height and promoting cheer safety awareness.

“While some cheer the study and proclaim some sort of victory in cheer safety, cheerleading is still the number one cause of catastrophic injury to female athletes. Parents who have lived the nightmare of death, paralysis and traumatic brain injury will not rest until Congress steps in,” proclaims Kimberly Archie, executive director of the National Cheer Safety Foundation (NCSF).

About the National Cheer Safety Foundation

The National Cheer Safety Foundation (NCSF) is dedicated to injecting science into cheer safety to reduce injury, disability and death from cheer injuries through research and education of parents, cheerleaders, coaches and administrators. For more information visit www.nationalcheersafety.com or contact us at 800-596-7860. To report cheer injuries go to www.cheerinjuryreport.com.

University of Louisville  sophomore Kristie Grubb suffered an injury during practice Wednesday night. She’s listed in fair condition at University Hospital after suffering from bruising on the brain. 

Grubb was practicing a standard move called a stunt double down. Grubb was the “flyer,” the girl tossed in the air. When she came down, she hit her head on the shoulder of one of her teammates. 

Todd Sharp, UofL’s head cheerleading coach, witnessed the accident. 

“The fact that she did hit her head, we thought it was important to go ahead and call an ambulance and be safe rather than sorry,” Sharp told WLKY in a phone interview. “Fortunately, we did that.”

Grubb is expected to recover fully.  See the full story here….

High school cheerleaders have argued for years that they’re athletes — just like football, baseball and basketball players. Cheerleaders do complex stunts, work out with weights, and practice from June to March.

Now cheerleaders in Visalia can prove their point: They’re being tested for drugs. Under a school policy approved last month, cheerleaders must submit to the same random drug tests given to other student-athletes. It appears to be the first district in the central San Joaquin Valley to take this step.

Read the full article…

High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The National Cheer Safety Foundation said the decision is the first of its kind in the nation and a victory for Wisconsin cheerleaders who no longer will have to worry about getting sued. At the same time, the group’s executive director, Kimberly Archie, said the case underscores the need for stricter rules governing the sport.

Read the full article…

CHEER JAM 2008, which aims to improve the level of cheerleading in Malaysia and the world, was split into two segments:  a cheerleading camp (December 11 to 13), and a coaches conference (December 13 to 14). It was organized by the Cheerleading Association and Register of Malaysia (CHARM), the official national governing body for cheerleading in Malaysia (Beverly Hon, President), with TM as the official sponsor. The event was supported by Celebrity Fitness with 8TV as the official media partner. Commenting on TM’s involvement, Dato’ Zaini Diman, Vice President, Sales Selangor said: “Cheerleading promotes teamwork, discipline, innovation and creativity, which are good values espoused by Telekom Malaysia. 

CHEER JAM 2008 ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with NCSSEcertification courses offered from 6pm to 9pm daily. The camp was open to all ages and skill levels–from beginner right up to advanced level and cheerleaders who attended the camp for to learn a bit of everything–from core skills like jumps, tumbling, choreography, dance, stunting and pyramids to other skills like make-up, uniform design, first aid and team management. The coaches’ conference saw cheerleading coaches undergoing theory as well hands-on practical sessions, with the option to sit for cheerleading certification exams at the end of the day.

CHEER JAM 2008 also featured guest trainers from Celebrity Fitness and The Body Shop who conducted dance/gym and make-up classes respectively at the camp while designer Karl Ng from the Malaysian Official Designer’s Association (MODA) conducted the Uniform Design segment. “We are proud to have been a part of this historical moment in Malaysian cheerleading, and giving cheerleaders and coaches the rare chance to learn the cutting edge techniques from the industry’s finest, all under one roof,” said Anne Gorman, NCSSE State Director and chief instructor at CHEER JAM 2008.

The umbrella insurance policy that is. According to an Investigative Report on FoxNews in Milwaukee, a Wisconsin Supreme Court case has spelled out L.I.A.B.I.L.I.T.Y. for parents when it comes to cheer injuries and who is going to pay for injuries not only for their own children, but injured teammates as well. 

Have you ever wondered if your cheerleader who is a base could be sued if he or she did not catch their flyer? Check out the FoxNews Investigative Report to get all of the details. Parents won’t want to miss this.

FOXNews Investigative Report    Scroll down to the “Cheerleading Danger” from 11-09-08

Umbrella Policy: A general insurance policy that fills any gaps in insurance liability coverage, usually $1 million

 

In the year since Kimberly Archie founded a nonprofit organization to shed light on the lack of national safety regulations for high school cheer squads, the mother of a former North Medford High School cheerleader has helped place cheerleader safety concerns on the national radar.

Archie, who now lives in Riverside, Calif., helped form the National Cheer Safety Foundation in January out of a support group of cheerleader parents called the Bring It On Safety Alliance.

The foundation’s spotlight on increasing cheerleader injuries and the absence of safety regulations in some states has made its way into the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, ABC News, Canada’s CBC News and the London Telegraph, among other news networks and publications. People magazine also is working on a spread about cheer safety and interviewed Archie and co-founder Ruth Burns, whose daughter, Ashley, died in a cheerleading accident, for the article.

Read the full article…

“Cheer Coach and Advisor is a perfect match for this program of cheer coach recognition,” says Gwen Holtsclaw, president of Cheer Ltd. “Under the leadership of editor Valerie Ninemire, CC & A has become the definitive magazine written specifically for cheer coaches. We could not be happier to have Cheer Coach and Advisor magazine working with us on this prestigious award program.”

Cheer Coach and Advisor magazine is published by VAN Publishing Inc. and has been a longtime supporter of Cheer Ltd.’s award-winning national cheer conference CheerCon.

“It is such an honor for Cheer Coach and Advisor to partner with Cheer Ltd. to sponsor such prestigious awards within the coaching community. Cheer Ltd. is a pinnacle within the spirit industry and continues to be an inspirational force taking cheer to new heights. We look forward to honoring these exceptional coaches and highlighting them among the pages of our magazine to allow all coaches the opportunity to build exceptional cheer programs,” says Heather Portnoy, publisher ofCheer Coach and Advisor magazine.

Look forward to hearing much more about these inspirational coaches as well as the 2009 awards program in upcoming magazine issues. You can nominate an outstanding coach on the Cheer LTD Web site.

As we begin another competition season, let’s take a few minutes to remind our cheerleaders and parents about their competition sportsmanship behaviors. Cheerleading is an activity that originally began as a support group and promoted good sportsmanship. At a recent competition I attended, the audience was asked to remain seated when squads were performing, and competition staff were standing at the back of the aisles to keep people from entering while performances were ongoing. Parents refused to stop; adults stood in the aisles talking on cell phones; adults moved in and out oblivious to the fact they were blocking the audience’s views of the performing groups. One parent, when asked to stay back, angrily refused to stop, stomped her way down ten rows of seats, sidled in to the middle of the row and began to complain to her seatmates, gesturing back to the competition staff. Another adult kicked at a cheerleader sitting on the floor of the lobby and directed an expletive at the cheerleader when she did not move out of the way quickly enough.

What has happened to common sense and treating others as we would like to be treated? Education is a key point when dealing with parents and cheerleaders alike. Do not assume people will behave as you expect them to. During parent meetings, give clear expectations of what you expect from parents and cheerleaders as it relates to behavior at competitions. Reading and distributing to parents and cheerleaders the event guidelines for dealing with unsportsmanlike conduct is also important. Coaches, teach parents and cheerleaders (and yourself if necessary!) how to win graciously and how to accept second, third, or fourteenth place. Shaking hands and congratulating winners is done in all sports–yet we don’t often see cheerleaders do this.

Let’s all work to bring sportsmanship back to cheerleading–parents, competitors, and coaches.

Technorati Tags: National Council for Spirit Safety and Education, Cheerleading News

You can see the full report here.

Keloland Television has an online article about the NCCSI report including some of the things that can be done to improve the safety of everyone involved.

Injury prevention is going to come from coaching education, proper training of the athletes, giving them the right environment and the right opportunities.”

As for those opportunities, Fritsch said parents should research cheer programs and choose one with coaches who are safety-certified.

The American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators has a website that parents can go to, which offers the top five questions that parents should be asking when their child joins a school or club

Read the full article…

Technorati Tags: NCCIS, AACCA, Cheerleading Safety, Cheerleading News