Patty Phommanyvong, a cheerleader for Marshall High School in Los Angeles, was thrust into the air while performing a stunt at a football game two years ago. The next thing anyone knew, she was limp. Her heart had stopped beating.
By the time paramedics got her heart restarted she was in a coma. Experts say she may have been inadvertently struck in the chest on her descent from the stunt. Living in a nursing home, Phommanyvong, now 19, can’t eat or speak.
Variations of her story are all too familiar wherever cheerleaders perform.
Jessica Smith of Sacramento City College suffered a broken neck when she fell headfirst from about 15 feet in 2006; Rechelle Sneath, a cheerleader for San Jose State University, fell while practicing in 2004 and is paralyzed from the waist down. Yet daredevil stunts are routinely performed at youth, high school and college sporting events across the country.
And, according to experts and reporting by Tribune Newspapers, these stunts are often done without proper safety precautions or supervision.
“Right now, cheerleading is out of control,” said Dr. Frederick Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. “Kids are practicing all over the place without mats. They … do what they want to, and some coaches aren’t certified and don’t know what they’re doing.”
Cheerleading injuries resulting in hospital emergency room visits have increased almost sixfold since 1980, to nearly 30,000 in 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported.
The exact number of serious injuries is not known because there is no formal reporting system. Over 26 years, statistics tracked by Mueller’s organization show disabilities or deaths caused by head or spine trauma are almost double for female high school cheerleaders than that for all female sports combined: 73 “catastrophic injuries” — including two deaths — from the fall of 1982 to the spring of 2008. Gymnastics was second, with nine injuries.
Cheerleading advocates say the percentage of debilitating injuries is low considering the participation numbers, which, by some estimates, is at least 3 million nationwide, more than 400,000 at the high school level. But reports say cheerleading accounts for a disproportionate percentage of major injuries when compared to other activities.
Experts attribute cheerleading’s danger to three things: inadequate safety measures, improper training and the competitiveness of the activity.
Some school districts have adopted “spirit rules” from organizations such as the National Federation of High Schools and the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators. The NFHS recommends that coaches pass a safety course offered by the AACCA, the same program the NCAA recommends.
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2,000 pounds
The impact after a cheerleader is launched into the air by teammates. Compare that to the impact of a hit by an NFL linebacker: 1,800 pounds. Measured on Fox’s “Sports Science.”
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