Cheerleaders Suffer More Injuries Than Any Other Female Atheletes
For decades, they stood by safe and smiling, a fixture on America's sporting sidelines. But today's young cheerleaders, who perform tricks once reserved for trapeze artists, may be in more peril than any female athletes in the country.
Emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries nationwide have more than doubled since the early 1990s, and the rate of life-threatening injuries has startled researchers. Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 -- head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death -- more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined
The New York Times | BILL PENNINGTON | March 30, 2007 06:09 PM