However, this is disturbing:
Because of the increasingly difficult stunts, injuries among high school cheerleaders are a problem.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that two-thirds of the roughly 100 cases of "catastrophic" sports injuries among high school girls since 1982 have involved cheerleading.
100 in roughly 25 years is about 4 a year. More than you'd like to see, but not an epidemic. As far as the high percentage of injuries being from cheerleading, how many girls' sports are there that have a high risk of significant head injury? Not many, so it makes sense that cheerleading would lead to the majority of injuries.
Coming from a sport where we've recently experienced an overload of catastrophic injuries, 4 per year is a huge number. While "catastrophic" injury may not mean death, it generally means at least a paralyzing injury. People get really uptight about these kinds of injuries, even though it's a voluntary sport.
Other girls sports that have a high risk of head injury for girls are equestrian sports, gymnastics, lacrosse, field hockey.
I agree the lawsuit is ridiculous. Nobody makes you sign up for cheerleading, and you know the risks when you do. There has to be a significant failure in the standard of care for a lawsuit of this type to succeed.
If I remember my law school classes correctly, there was the case of a Bengals player suing another player for an injury sustained during a game. That's the suit that basically resulted in the rule that players can't sue other players for injuries incurred during the course of a game that's not the result of some malicious intent.
I'm glad the court ruled the way it did.
To do otherwise would have opened an unending can of worms...
