Citing an increasing number of injuries, the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday advised treating cheerleading like other high school sports. Take the NEWS POLL.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says cheerleading should be considered a sport because the activity now regularly includes stunts such as this one the Liberty High School cheerleaders performed Monday.
That means requiring preseason physicals and access to the same level of qualified coaches, medical care and injury surveillance.
New Jersey's high school sports association doesn’t consider cheerleading a sport, and the Pennsylvania association only started overseeing the activity this year. But high schools throughout the Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey say they already consider cheerleading a sport.
“We treat cheerleading exactly like other sports,” said Easton Area School District Athletic Director Jim Pokrivsak, who said that’s been the case for at least a decade.
The school’s cheerleaders are required to get preseason physicals and have access to the school’s trainers and weight room as all other athletes do, Pokrivsak said. Their coaches are required to undergo concussion and cardiac arrest training with the school’s other coaches, he said.
Officials in the Hackettstown, Nazareth Area, Warren Hills Regional and Wilson Area school districts also said their schools treat cheerleading the same as their other sports.
“They get physicals, they go through training — they have requirements like all the other athletes,” Wilson Area Athletic Director Rosie Amato said. “Why would they be any different?”
Hackettstown Athletic Director Bob Grauso said there’s good reason to treat cheerleaders like other athletes: At Hackettstown, at least, cheerleaders rank with football players as the school’s top two most-injured classes of athletes.
“We’ve probably had some of the worst injuries from those two," he said. "It is a dangerous sport."
Top, from left, Phillipsburg High School senior Taylor Hajchik, 17, senior Jess Neil, 17, and Sidney Slack, 14, perform in a pyramid during cheerleading practice Monday at the school.
“We consider them athletes,” he said.
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, however, does not. Association Assistant Director Don Danser said it’s not because the association wouldn’t classify cheerleading as a sport but because it’s never received such a request.
“That’s never come up because the schools don’t seem to want it to be a sport,” he said. “It wouldn’t take much. If they wanted it, they would get it.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics noted that 29 state high school athletic associations recognize cheerleading as a sport, a figure it said it would like to increase to give cheerleaders better access to qualified coaches, certified athletic trainers and surveillance of injuries.
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association just started overseeing cheerleading this year but doesn’t have any requirements for training or coaching for any of its sports, Associate Executive Director Melissa Mertz said. Cheerleaders, however, will now have to meet the association’s requirements of preseason physicals and passing grade-point averages, she said.
The association decided to accept cheerleading as a sport after it decided to organize its first statewide cheerleading competition in February, Mertz said.
“We were interested in running a championship, and after we did that, the questions came,” she said. “If we were going to run a championship, shouldn’t we run it as a sport and have to abide by our eligibility rules?”
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CHEERLEADING INJURIESThe number of cheerleaders injured each year has climbed dramatically in the past two decades. Common stunts that pose risks include tossing and flipping cheerleaders in the air and creating human pyramids that reach 15 feet high or more.
Last year, there were almost 37,000 emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries among girls and women aged 6 to 22, according to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That’s more than four times higher than in 1980, when cheerleading was tamer.
Associated Press