The days when cheerleaders stood on the sidelines just shouting sis, boom bah and shaking pompons are long gone.
Cheerleading is now a strenuous sport that can lead to the sort of injuries other athletes sustain.
With another school year only weeks away, doctors with the University of Michigan Health System are warning that cheerleading has become the leading cause of catastrophic injury in young female athletes.
Data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission shows that rates of injuries from cheerleading accidents have gone from nearly 5,000 in 1980 to close to 26,000 to 28,000 in the past few years, according to Dr. Amy Miller Bohn, a physician with the UMHS department of family medicine.
"If you look at cheerleading injuries, most of them are still more the common types of things that we should think about - muscle strains or pulls, ligament injuries, tendon injuries," Miller Bohn said. "The concern is that there are certainly a fair number of increasingly severe injuries."
Some of the increase in cheerleading-related injuries can be attributed to the sheer increase in the number of young women engaged in the sport.
The rise in catastrophic injuries appears related to the increasing difficulty of the acrobatic routines cheerleaders perform and the daring skills would-be cheerleaders trying to make some cheering teams must demonstrate.
"Cheerleading has become an actual competitive sport," she said, in which cheerleaders perform "very risky stunts."
Of particular concern is cheerleaders practicing routines without trained coaches and spotters on hand.
As a 14-year-old in Livonia, Mich., Laura Jackson thought she would impress the cheerleading coaches at Stevenson High School by performing a back tuck.
She landed on her head, fracturing her neck.
Now a 20-year-old college student, Jackson emerged from the injury paralyzed from the neck down.
As she tried to perform the stunt, "There was no real spotter there," Jackson said in a recent taped interview, just another young woman who was only a few years older.
After hitting the floor, "I remember just laying there and immediately I stopped breathing," said Jackson, who now breaths with the help of a mechanical ventilator.
Parents of would-be cheerleaders can play a role in helping prevent severe injuries, Miller Bohn says. They should ask questions about:
謬he coach's experience.
標hat type of athletes with which the coach has worked.
肘f coaches have experience with gymnastic stunt work.
標hat the plan is for that cheerleading squad.
標hat types of activities they will perform.
標ho is supervising.
標here activities will be performed.
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