http://gymnasticscoaching.com/new/2009/01/catastrophic-injury-in-cheerleading/ tumbling, tramp, diving, acrobatics, circus, cheer, dance, martial arts, X sports ... Wed, 23 May 2012 14:55:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://gymnasticscoaching.com/new/2009/01/catastrophic-injury-in-cheerleading/comment-page-1/#comment-109231 Kelly Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:40:46 +0000 http://gymnasticscoaching.com/?p=7331#comment-109231 Interesting that there's "only" been six. I was a cheerleader on one of the squads that experienced a death (near Houston, TX 1991) at the jr high level and wonder if they are counting Jr High, too. What's unfortunate is that there was an awful lot of negative press regarding cheering after this particular accident, and it was truly a freak accident. The girl who died was simply climbing onto the shoulders of another girl to SIT on her shoulders--a most basic cheer stunt that kids do horsing around to varying degrees all the time. Falling 3-4 feet generally wouldn't kill you, but if you hit your head just so, it does. Still, the press was unfortunate in suggesting that we should have had mats and probably woudn't have been satisfied until we were doing shoulder sits in football helmets. Bottom line: a freak accident like that can happen in ANY sport, to blame cheerleading in this particular case is to look for the easy way out of the blame game. Interesting that there’s “only” been six. I was a cheerleader on one of the squads that experienced a death (near Houston, TX 1991) at the jr high level and wonder if they are counting Jr High, too. What’s unfortunate is that there was an awful lot of negative press regarding cheering after this particular accident, and it was truly a freak accident. The girl who died was simply climbing onto the shoulders of another girl to SIT on her shoulders–a most basic cheer stunt that kids do horsing around to varying degrees all the time. Falling 3-4 feet generally wouldn’t kill you, but if you hit your head just so, it does. Still, the press was unfortunate in suggesting that we should have had mats and probably woudn’t have been satisfied until we were doing shoulder sits in football helmets. Bottom line: a freak accident like that can happen in ANY sport, to blame cheerleading in this particular case is to look for the easy way out of the blame game.

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