Consumer Health News

Dr. Vangsness: Cheerleading is a dangerous sport, urges proper training

By April MacIntyre Oct 19, 2010, 5:53 GMT

Careful girls- San Francisco 49ers gold rush cheerleaders - 2010 NFL - New Orleans Saints at San Francisco 49ers (25-22) - © Image of Sport / PR Photos

Cheerleaders are some of the most severely injured students in high school and collegiate sports. 

It is a given that certain school sports can be dangerous, football, wrestling, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, rugby and even baseball.  And it’s big news when the star quarterback blows out a knee or has an injured shoulder, or a wrestler who snaps an arm in a critical weight bearing hold. 

Parents who know these sports come with a possibility of an injury are often shocked when they learn that the most injuries sustained honor goes to Cheerleading! 

That’s right, those pretty girls in tiny skirts and sparkles in their hair have more injuries and fatalities than any other sport!!!

Did you know that approximately 25,000 cheerleaders ended up in the ER in 2007?  And with increasingly complex routines that incorporate high flying gymnastics, that number is rising.

Cheerleaders often are elevated to extreme heights in pyramids and often are tossed in the air to perform tricks, then rely on other people to catch them.  They do flips and twirls at a dizzying pace between other cheerleaders who are doing the same tricks coming from the opposite direction.   The resulting injuries can be life-altering.

Sports Injury specialist and orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Thomas Vangsness is professor of Orthopedic Surgery in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California; a team physician for both the University of Southern California athletic teams as well as several high school athletic programs.  

Dr. Vangsness is concerned that most people are unaware of the injuries these young women sustain in training and competing and wants people to be made aware of the importance of proper training and conditioning for these athletes. 

He explains that is it the overuse of ligaments, abnormal motions at the joints and extremes of motion that most harmful to the athlete.  Not to mention the most dangerous risk… falling without proper padding.

Dr. Vangsness tells Monsters and Critics, “Cheerleaders get injured.  It’s the repetitive motions in their training practices and the extremes of motion that cause most injuries, that and the falls from their lifts and pyramids”

Even America’s most famous Laker Girl, Paula Abdul, is still dealing with the neck and back pain associated from a bad fall she took in the 1980s.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the rates of injuries from cheerleading accidents have gone from nearly 5,000 in 1980 to nearly 30,000 in the past few years.  The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research reports that, statistically speaking, cheerleading in the most dangerous sport, even more dangerous than football.  And cheerleading injuries account for about 65% of all female catastrophic injuries in high school or college.

Cheerleading has a higher possibility of major injuries to your spine and back then any other female sport.

According to Dr. Vangsness, “It is only recently that cheerleading was considered a sport.  So it was basically unsupervised or under supervised.  In some cases, the coach is a parent or a student without the proper training to be an athletic supervisor.” 

He wants parents and students to be prepared before breaking out the Pom Poms.

For more information on Dr. Vangsness, please check out his website here