Cheerleading as a contact sport?

While reading a recent Sports Illustrated Issue devoted to hard hits in the NFL and concussions, I came to a realization. For the first time, there was not the slightest twinge of regret about not having a boy to play football with me. I am glad that my girls will never play tackle football in high school or college.  But then it got me thinking about what sports they would play or have talked about playing.

Annie, I think, has her mother's eye-hand coordination and thus will probably not be active in soccer, basketball, softball, etc. She loves to swim and is really good so maybe that will stick. Kelly likes soccer practice, but not the games which is pretty much counterintuitive to an average kid's thought process, but that fits perfectly with Kelly's personality. So not sure if she will continue with soccer or not.  Brigid is very physical right now, so maybe she would like to play football if she has the chance.  But really she is way too young to figure out. With that all said, the one sport that pops up more frequently with Annie and Kelly then any other is cheerleading. 

If it is the kind of cheerleading I remember from my days at Cardinal Dougherty H.S. in Philadelphia, then that seems harmless enough. I remember the cheerleading team as a nice group of girls who tried their best to get the crowd involved in the football and basketball games. They were also the ones out front during all of the pep rallies and spirit days. The most daring thing they did was maybe toss a girl up in the air a few feet and quickly catch her. There were no boys on the team and the girls' upper body strength was not great enough to really get any height on their tosses.  No, my high school cheerleading squad did actual cheers.  Which make sense since that is what they are suppose to do.  Like my favorite cheer:

                "People in the front, let me here you grunt. UGH!
                 People in the middle let me here you sizzle. SSSSSZZZ!
                 People in the rear let me hear you cheer. Yeah, shake that thing."

And then they would do a little shaking and moving of their bodies.  Think maybe I should have spent more time watching the football and basketball games then staring at the cheerleaders?

Today the type of cheerleading done is actually called Competitive Spirit Squads.  Competitive Spirit, what does that mean?  My image of competitive spirit is like the scene from the movie Hoosiers when one section of the stands said "We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit,  how about you?"  And then they would point to the opposing student section and they would do the same cheer back to see who indeed had the most spirit.  But that type of cheering does not even come close.  The Competitive Spirit Squads around today are hell bent on throwing girls higher and farther while they do multiple flips and twirls and then hoping to catch them when they come down.  They do not even do any actual cheers while they are doing these stunts. The routines are usually put to some sort of contemporary dance/club music and maybe everyone once in a while the squad will clap and say the name of their team. As a frequent channel surfer, I've seen a few of these competitions and it struck me that there could be some serious injuries involved with this sport.

A quick Google search on "high school sports injuries by sport" confirmed my assumption.  As I read report after report I almost began to wish my girls could possibly play football.  According to an article by Terry Ziegler on suite101.com, cheerleading is quickly becoming one of the most dangerous sports in America.  The total volume of injuries is not as high as other sports, but when you look at the number of injuries per participant it is staggering. Also, the injuries they are talking about are catastrophic injuries, not your run of the mill sprained ankle or bruises (which still occur alarmingly high in cheerleading). Catastrophic injuries are defined as "fatalities, permanent disability injuries, and serious injuries with complete recovery."  This definition comes from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In fact, in the 2008 Annual Report from the NCCSI, cheerleading accounts for 65% of all female catastrophic injuries. 

If the change in cheerleading in the past 17 years has gone from actual cheering and simple pyramids to amateur Cirque du Soleil shows, I am scared to think what they will become in another 10 years when my girls will be going to high school. With visions of scenes from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - only except for swords and kung fu, the cheerleaders will use pom poms and high leg kicks - I'm thinking helmets and pads may not be so bad after all. For any sport, that is, not just football.