Cheerleading: The most dangerous sport

Cheerleading - which involves tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting - has been named the most dangerous of all sports. Even though through the years safety efforts have led to fewer mishaps, a new report suggests that the sport still continues to cause more serious and deadly injuries than other sports.

The researchers behind this study have found from records between 1982 and 2007, that there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority (67) occurring in cheerleading. The next most dangerous sports: gymnastics (nine such injuries) and track (seven). The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released its 26th annual report on the topic.

As per the latest figures from the 2007-2008 academic year for college and high school sports, male and female, catastrophic injuries have been defined as any severe or fatal injury incurred during participation in the sport. Statistics for the 26-year period from the fall of 1982 through the spring of 2008 show that there were 1,116 direct catastrophic injuries in high school (905) and college sports (211).

They further reveal that high school sports were associated with 152 fatalities, 379 non-fatal injuries and 374 serious injuries. The figures show that college sports accounted for 22 fatalities, 63 non-fatal injuries and 126 serious injuries. According to them, cheerleading accounted for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among all female sports. The number of cheerleading injuries fell slightly in the 2007-08 academic year.

"Progress has been slow, but there has been an increased emphasis on cheerleading safety," Live Science quoted the study’s author Frederick O. Mueller as saying. "Continued data collection on all types of cheerleading injuries will hopefully show that these safety measures are working to reduce injuries," he added.
Source: www.sports.timesofindia.com

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