In Netflix’s Cheer, there’s a particularly memorable moment. As his coach looks on, athlete T.T. Barker, who is already recovering from a back injury, hoists a flyer overhead. He’s grimacing. grunting. Then he sobs as he falls onto the mat. His coach had something to say about dedication. The point was made. The question of whether it was the correct one is quite different.
Even though that scene is uncomfortable, it captures something that the sports industry has been subtly avoiding for decades. The organizations that oversee American athletics have yet to decide whether any of the cheerleaders’ athletic feats, which include throwing teammates 25 or 30 feet into the air and performing gymnastic pyramids that call for timing, strength, and nerve, qualify as sports. The classification question has an almost bureaucratic tone. It isn’t.
Despite the lack of attention, the numbers have been increasing for years. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recorded about 5,000 ER visits related to cheerleading in 1980. That number had risen above 26,000 by 2007. Over 15% of those visits were due to head and neck injuries alone. More than 70% of all catastrophic injuries in women’s collegiate sports are caused by cheerleading. Approximately 65% of high school girls’ catastrophic injuries are caused by cheerleading. Soft statistics are not what these are. They talk about paralysis, fractures, and sometimes even death.
It’s easy to see what has changed since 1960. Cheerleaders jumped a few inches off the ground and shook pompoms in the 1960s. Since their role was to literally lead cheering, the term “cheerleader” made sense back then. Because there were few physical risks, any coaching that was available did not require certification. That world has vanished entirely. Contemporary competitive cheerleading is a contact sport that requires exceptional trust between teammates, aerial acrobatics, and gymnastics skills. It seems almost deliberately deceptive to refer to it by the same name as the 1962 version.
What cheerleading has become is not the true issue. The surrounding systems haven’t kept up, which is the issue. Too many programs still do not require coaches to have relevant certifications. There aren’t always athletic trainers at practice. It is acceptable to use practice facilities that would make a junior varsity basketball program look foolish. Additionally, cheerleading is not governed by the same athletic departments that oversee football, soccer, and swimming because it does not fall under the official definition of a varsity sport in the majority of jurisdictions. As a result, the safety regulations and institutional accountability associated with those sports do not apply here either.
The opposition to categorization may have some cultural roots. Even though the athletes themselves are suffering from injuries that would keep quarterbacks out of action, cheerleading still has an image problem in some parts of the sports establishment due to its legacy of pompoms and halftime performances. The Navarro College cheerleaders were the hardest athletes he had ever filmed, according to documentary filmmaker Greg Whiteley, who had previously spent years filming football for Last Chance U. Not the hardest. the hardest. And he was very clear about that.
For years, groups like the National Cheer Safety Foundation have advocated for stricter regulations, such as improved coach training, required mats for intricate stunts, and limitations on basket tosses for athletes lacking fundamental skills. Research from organizations such as the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research has been clear: better oversight, better surfaces, and better spotters. These are issues that can be resolved. Simply put, they’re not being resolved quickly enough.
The cleanest route to accountability seems to be to make cheerleading an official varsity sport, with all that entails. certified coaches. On-site certified athletic trainers. supervision by athletic departments that genuinely stand to lose. It would establish structures intended to lessen injuries, but it wouldn’t completely eradicate them—no sport does. These structures are mostly nonexistent at the moment.
Tonight, teammates on a hardwood floor are hurling a sixteen-year-old girl into the air, and the adults in charge of her safety may or may not be aware of what they’re doing. The paradox is that. It’s a real sport. There is a genuine risk. The acknowledgment is still lacking.⁖※
