By Jim Lord
Executive Director
American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors
Here we go again. Another round of articles and follow-up articles on cheerleading safety is making its way around the newspaper, television and Internet circuit.
Informing the Public or Ignoring the Facts?
We would welcome the attention on cheerleading injuries if in fact the articles provided real solutions and information that give a reasonable amount of perspective. Instead, the stories are sensationalized by presenting the information in the worst possible light, and even mislead the public in possible causes of cheerleading injuries. Here are some examples:
Incomplete Information
The numbers being used are the same as those over the past two years, yet they are given as if this is continuing information and that injury rates continue to rise. No participation figures, relevant background information or corresponding data for other athletic activities are presented in these articles. In fact, no actual injury rate is ever given.
Inaccurate Information
Media statement: "Of all the serious injuries to female high school and college athletes, more than half are from cheerleading. More than football, more than hockey, more than all other sports combined." That is an actual quote from George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America.
Fact: Cheerleading does not have more serious injuries that football, hockey or all other sports combined. Over 350,000 people were treated in emergency rooms for football related injuries in 2004. That number is often ignored because there are probably more football players than cheerleaders, and it is primarily males that participate. It may be more realistic to compare cheerleading numbers to women’s basketball as the participation numbers are likely similar. In the same year in which 26,000 cheerleaders were treated in emergency rooms, they were sitting next to over 100,000 female basketball players. Nearly quadruple the amount of emergency room visits for women's basketball, who a) have more access to an athletic trainer to filter out minor injuries and b) who do not participate in a year-round activity. *For complete information on fatalities, catastrophic injuries and serious injuries directly related to activity, see the table in the pdf file.
Inaccurate Comparisons
The numbers being given also do not account for the fact that cheerleading is nearly a yearround activity that takes place across sports seasons. Any comparison to other activities must account for the shorter participation time for those sports. Consider an athlete that participates in football and in basketball and is injured once in each season. Now consider another athlete participating on a cheerleading squad that cheers for football and basketball and is injured once during each of those seasons. The two injury rates are statistically equal, yet cheerleading will be shown to have twice the number of injuries. Without injury rate information, the statistics show what the author intends to show.
Use of Emergency Room
visits Using emergency room visits is also inflammatory in that the vast majority, over 98% of those visits, were classified as "Treated & Released, Or Examined & Released Without Treatment." *The average person reading "emergency room visit" envisions 26,000 cheerleaders going into the emergency room on a stretcher. There are obviously serious injuries that need emergency procedures including hospitalization, but to not include the percentage that were treated and released or even released without treatment needed only adds to the misrepresentation of cheerleading injuries and the strides that have been made with regard to safety.
Filtering the Facts to Make a Point?
The primary concern for any safety organization is the minimization of catastrophic and fatal injuries. The numbers that have been shown regarding catastrophic injuries in cheerleading are again somewhat misleading. The most often cited numbers come from the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research study. They include injury data that goes back to 1982. The figures used in articles state that "over 50% of catastrophic injuries to female athletes are from cheerleading." **Again, with no participation numbers, no reference to the fact that during a large majority of that date range cheerleading was one of the only athletic opportunities for females and without any other activity's numbers for comparison, one is left guessing as to how many girls are actually catastrophically injured.
The saying that "one injury is too many" is certainly true, and our goal should be to have none. However, the number of catastrophic injuries and even deaths in other sports is never mentioned in these stories to give the reader any perspective with which to compare the risks in cheerleading. Nowhere does it state that there were thirteen deaths to high school pole vaulters between 1982 and 1997. ** Nowhere does it state that the year 1990 stands out for football because there were no deaths reported that year. Furthermore, since 1990 there is a "positive trend" toward only single digit annual deaths as if it is an accepted risk in football. ***To reduce those catastrophic injuries, they don’t recommend eliminating tackling or removing the kickoff from the playbook. They recommend increased safety awareness, training in proper techniques and proper supervision. The same recommendations should be true for cheerleading, and have been made by several national organizations and safety studies.
*Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) – 2004, Females ages 5 – 24; http://www.cpsc.gov/LIBRARY/neiss.html
**National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research - National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research - Twenty-third Annual Report: Fall of 1982 - Spring of 2005.
***National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research - Annual Survey of Football Injury Research, 1931-2006
****All other sports/athletics shown are for one-season sports. Cheerleading is a year-round activity, but the numbers are being compared to one-season sports.
