Pediatricians offer cheerleading safety guidelines
- Cheerleading has evolved into a competitive sport
- Number and severity of injuries up
- Designating cheerleading as a sport would subject it to rules
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, says a pediatricians group's new policy statement.
Among the group's key recommendations: designating cheerleading as a sport, so participants will be afforded the same safety benefits available to other school athletes, from availability of qualified coaches and athletic trainers, to access to well-maintained practice facilities, to limits on the amount of time allowed for practicing.
Currently, only 29 state high school athletic associations recognize cheerleading as a sport, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association does not include competitive cheerleading in its list of sponsored sports, says the statement, published in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics and released today at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual conference in New Orleans.
"Cheerleading has evolved over the last couple of decades 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 that there were approximately 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 Feinberg School of Medicine.
According to statistics cited in the policy statement:
- There have been 26,000 cheerleading injuries in the USA annually since 2007, an increase of 400% from 4,954 injuries in 1980.
- The overall injury rate in high school cheerleading remains lower than in other girls high school sports (0.9 per 1,000 exposures, compared to 8.5 per 1,000 exposures for gymnastics and 5.3 per 1,000 exposures for soccer, for example), but cheerleading accounts for 66% of all catastrophic injuries in high school female athletes over the past 25 years. (Catastrophic injuries can result in permanent brain injury, paralysis or death.)
- Concussion rates increased by 26% between 1998 and 2008 for cheerleading, but remained 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.
--Overall, sprains and strains are the most common types of cheerleading-related injuries (53%), followed by abrasions/contusions/hematomas (13% to 18%).
Organizations including the NFHS and American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors have enacted specific rules for executing technical skills safely, but additional efforts will add to increased safety, says LaBella.
Among the AAP's other injury prevention recommendations:
- Mandatory pre-season physicals and access to qualified strength and conditioning coaches.
- Training in all spotting techniques and only attempting stunts after demonstrating appropriate skill progressions.
- Perform pyramid and partner stunts on a spring/foam floor or grass/turf only; never on hard, wet or uneven surfaces.
- Limit pyramid heights to no more than two people high
- 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," says LaBella. "Overall, it's a fairly safe sport. We're concerned that the number of catastrophic injuries are so disproportionate to other sports. Careful attention to some of these safety precautions will help bring that down."