The HARTFORD COURANT has big news today, but buries the lede. The newspaper notes that UConn has banned its cheerleading squad from performing gymnastic manuevers in favor of a “spirit squad.”
In other words, those crazy dangerous stunts you see performed during college sports events? You won’t see them anymore at Storrs.
Christine Wilson, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of student activities, said the change was made because “we want people formerly called cheerleaders to focus in on building spirit at UConn, on spending time working on ways to engage fans and to really spread Husky spirit” rather than spend hours perfecting stunts.
Of course, we know the real reason for the ban, and the Courant fails to even bring it up.
In the past three decades, college cheerleaders for some unknown reason transitioned from squads designed to rouse school spirit to teams of gymnasts performing death-defying (literally) stunts throughout games. The result has been predictable: untold scores of injuries, many of which have left cheerleaders paralyzed for life. And the injury rate in high school has been worse.
That doesn’t count men and women hobbled by needless, prematurely debilitating muscular and skeletal conditions after their school days because of the extraordinary pounding wrought by their cheerleading “routines.”
Those injuries, and lawsuits, are the real reason UConn has decided on the ban. But as always, the politically-correct university system has to tiptoe around the real issue, not once mentioning the appalling injury rate suffered by cheerleaders. From a recent report by the L.A. TIMES, via SbB:
Data from the Consumer Products Safety Commission show that the number of catastrophic injuries — those involving death or disability caused by head or spine trauma — have grown from fewer than 5,000 in 1980 to 26,000 to 28,000 per year in the last few years, according to Dr. Amy Miller Bohn, a family medicine specialist at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor. According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, cheerleading accidents account for 65% to 66% of all female catastrophic sports injuries in high school and college.
Then you get this comment in the Courant from a reader:
Another UConn alum here who thinks this is a complete joke!!! Seriously, we are going to look like fools. Total amateur hour!
jschilt (08/26/2009, 10:05 AM )
Look like fools to who? Do people really care that much about cheerleading stunts besides friends and family? Would the typical fan miss those stunts? Sorry to break this to you gym cat, but N-O. Especially considering the needless injuries.
I have a feeling this could be the beginning of the end for gymnastics-based cheerleading. And that demise can’t come too soon.
11:19 am on August 26th, 2009
In the late 1990’s and 2000’s, colleges were making “cheer” into a varsity sport, giving away scholarships. The motivation, of course, was Title IX compliance - they had to offer as many scholarships to women athletes as to men, and football simply uses up so many men’s scholarships that the schools are scrambling to find sports where they can offer more scholarships to women.
During the same era there was a dramatic expansion of women’s rowing (crew) for the same reason. But colleges found that crew was a bit more expensive a sport than they had bargained upon, requiring the construction of boat houses on expensive waterfront properties, rowing shells which average $30 to $50 grand apiece (carbon composite technology), and lots of regattas at distant locations. Also, they caught a lot of flack from the men’s crew teams, who didn’t get scholarships. So some universities, like Cincinnati, opted to cut their varsity women’s rowing program and substitute low-investment sports like lacross and “cheer” instead. But I suspect they will find that brain injuries and paralysis are pretty uncommon in crew, but not so much in “cheer”.
11:50 am on August 26th, 2009
Thanks R.
BTW, I know that some schools, namely USC, doesn’t have a cheerleading squad predicated on gymnastics.
I really think the time has come to do away with it.
12:00 pm on August 26th, 2009
R - you know what you are talking about - that is a rarity for an online discussion.
The NCAA and the {name escapes me … the federal office that enforces Title IX} are in a pinch. As they say “they can’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs” ie: football and mens bball. And it’s hard - really hard - to offset those 95 football players and scholarships.
Although I love college football, I think it needs to come back down to earth. That’s why I like the prospect of an upstart pro football league. College football (and mens bball) is SO much more competitive than any other sport - it is ridiculous to compare them. No womens rower is going to get run out of the program for under performance as it routinely happens in football.
If we want true equality, why not just have ONE basketball team - coed. Wouldn’t that be fair? We don’t have a “mens physics class” and “womens physics class.”
12:17 pm on August 26th, 2009
College football isn’t about talent, it’s about context. Traditions, tailgating, stadiums. Just look at hoops, talent is a joke compared to 20 years ago, but still generates hundreds of millions every year.
Losing a few talented players will not bring college football back to earth.
1:30 pm on August 26th, 2009
Pete, you said: “No womens rower is going to get run out of the program for under performance as it routinely happens in football.”
Actually, that does happen. Welcome to the world of NCAA competition, regardless of the sport.
It’s true that the rowing programs don’t get the same pressure as men’s football and basketball programs, because they aren’t in the public eye as much, and aren’t revenue generators. But the coach still has to show improvement in the program or their job is at stake (the Univ. of Wash. women’s crew coach lost her job a couple of years ago for that reason).
And this works it’s way down to the rowers, as well - under NCAA rules, no scholarship is guaranteed beyond one year. So any scholarship athlete can be cut from the team at the end of the year in order to free up a scholarship for a replacement. The usual proceedure, however, is to simply demote them to the “C” boats, which is similar to getting benched in football. It’s bad enough to have to be at workouts at 6:00 a.m. every morning, all year long, regardless of the weather. But the prospect of spending years never going to “away” regattas, and finding yourself competing against freshman (”novice” ) rowers for one or two years, often results in the rowers quiting on their own volition.
Don’t forget, also, that there are quite a few non-scholarship rowers who are more than happy to have someone lose their scholarship, in the hopes they can step into their slot. In teams where the coach doesn’t enforce a cooperative spirit of teamwork, that can result in some petty efforts at sabatoge - constant reports to the coach of minor rules violations, etc. I’ve even heard of someone planting alchohol in a rower’s dorm room, and then making an anonymous complaint to campus security and the coach of a “drunken parties”, in order to push a teammate out of their scholarship slot.
1:33 pm on August 26th, 2009
R is correct. More Title IX perversion. If you have some spare time check out Title IX Consultants in a web search. A bunch of old chicks making money enforcing a goofy law by intimidating career bureaucrats. Hopefully some day common sense will win out.
4:16 pm on August 26th, 2009
I’m with you on this one. Modern cheerleading has nothing to do with leading cheers or generating crowd excitement. If you really want to compete with some break-neck moves, you could actually join the gymnastics team. It’s not about showing off moves — it’s about “being” a cheerleader and “that” girl.
It’s just not bringing anything to the sports they intrude upon.
4:21 pm on August 26th, 2009
This entire discussion/subject is just more evidence (to me) that scholarship intercollegiate athletics should not exist. College is supposed to be about academics, not TV ratings and million dollar coaches. The big-time NCAA men’s college football and b-ball are nothing more than modern-era plantations that exploit poor, under educated youths. What’s the percentages of Div I scholarship football and bballers who graduate with a marketable degree versus those that leave the system still semi-literate, at best.
7:31 pm on August 26th, 2009
I hate when they bury the “lede” or when things happen “to” soon. I also love when my favorite blogs are written with second grade grammar mistakes. I know I’m being picky, but as you go after the big outlets you can’t let stupid crap like that get in the way of otherwise good posts.
7:42 pm on August 26th, 2009
“Lede” is correct:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lede
7:55 pm on August 26th, 2009
Joel… Grammar check: FAIL
7:58 pm on August 26th, 2009
I remember the first time I found out cheerleaders were on FULL scholarship. Amazing. Minor sports rarely give out full rides. Collegiate cheerleading squads get more scholarships than the school’s basketball team in many cases.
11:32 pm on August 26th, 2009
Damn. Brooks, accept my apologies on “lede.”
-A stupid second grader, although I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of my vocab words.
8:23 am on August 27th, 2009
With most schools going to the solid, clingy Lycra skirts, the acrobatics was practically the only way to get your RDA of cheer bloomers (other than the occasional high-kicking flash).
Which is why the USC Song Girls are the greatest cheerleading team around: they stick with the traditional flash-prone pleated skirts AND pair them with form-flattering sweaters!
6:44 pm on August 27th, 2009
Geez, you guys are much deeper than me. I fell for Brooks’ trap of looking at the lead photo and thinking of Nirvana’s “Smell Like Team Spirit”……
1:56 pm on October 1st, 2009
Have you seen the UCONN cheerleaders the past 8-10 years? I doubt they can do gymnastic stunts. Most are 20 pounds overweight compared to most college cheerleading squads.