For each person someone hoists into the air — the flyer — there is at least one back spotter, often a coach.Without that, Archie says, school teams don’t feel any real legal pressure to abide by regulations. That includes having an emergency action plan, which the AAP report says should be commonplace and clearly posted […]
For each person someone hoists into the air — the flyer — there is at least one back spotter, often a coach.Without that, Archie says, school teams don’t feel any real legal pressure to abide by regulations. That includes having an emergency action plan, which the AAP report says should be commonplace and clearly posted in all schools and gyms.“We’ll be bringing all those things together to see if there are rules out there we have been allowing that we have a concern about and whether we need to address those through education or if we’ve done that, to make a rule change,” Lord says.
“In Missouri and in Kansas they have requirements for training either for their coaches, the same types of training that other sports coaches have to follow,” Lord says. “They provide opportunities for competition, but also they make them follow the safety rules and they do that without being necessarily a Title IX type of sport.”There’s no database where all gyms and schools report cheer injuries, so collection can be piecemeal. That’s something to consider when reviewing overall rates, says Kimberly Archie, a founder of the National Cheerleading Safety Foundation – established by former coaches, cheerleaders and their parents.“When I say that people are pretty taken aback, but it affects how seriously people take this issue,” she says.Jim Lord, USA Cheer’s director of education and programs, says that’s because under Title IX, teams should be competitive in nature and not every sport is.One roadblock to Title IX and broad recognition is a bias against cheerleading, Archie says. Depending on your age or exposure to the sport, you might still see it as the pom-pom-waving sport it was decades ago. It’s also the only sport with its own category on PornHub, Archie says.A major step would be state associations and high school athletic departments overseeing and formally recognizing cheerleading as a sport.“It would solidify cheerleader’s access to trained individuals, to making sure they have athletic trainers that are available, they have strength and conditioning personnel,” Canty says. “All those things kind of open up.”
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In its policy statement, the AAP also calls for physical health screenings for prospective athletes. Lord says USA Cheer supports all the recommendations in the report.
In its policy statement, the AAP also calls for physical health screenings for prospective athletes. Lord says USA Cheer supports all the recommendations in the report.
With large-scale changes such as Title IX recognition unlikely to happen in the immediate future, individual gyms and schools can still institute things like an action plan to help keep more kids out of Dr. Canty’s clinic at Children’s Mercy.
