Not sure if anyone has noticed but they did a special on “Cheerleading” on E! over the weekend. Now you might be wondering what I have to say about cheerleading and even more, what cheerleading has to do with the legal world. Well, for starters, I have to admit why I happened to watch that show on E. I was a cheerleader. I did the whole thing - the outfits, the glitter on the face…and I have to say that I really did love it. However, one thing I never thought of and also was never faced with was being subject to any rules or limitations about what was allowed and what wasn’t when performing stunts.
Now, fortunately for me (and my parents more likely) the school I went to was not a big cheerleading school. I mean, of course we cheered at all of the games, went to cheerleading camp at SMU and sweated our butts off in the 100 degree Texas weather but the liklihood of seeing someone from our sqaud being tossed in the air was about 1 in a million. Maybe putting someone on top of a pyramid was a 1 in 10 chance but we certainly were not the basket-tossing type.
After this weekend, I learned that there were not any rules at all for cheerleading for quite some time. It took girls flying into the air, landing on their head, neck and unfortunately suffering some serious injuries to finally get someone to take notice. The American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators was created in 1987 and there are additional courses that seem to be created for new programs on safety. Who knew one could learn so much from watching E!.
In any event, an interesting legal situation is created if someone gets hurt as technically whose fault is it? Is the person who was responsible for catching the person? Is it the coach who should have been watching more closely? Is it the school who hired the coach who should have been watching more closely?
I am really happy that some light has been shed on this topic as cheerleading is becoming more of an aggressive sport and there should be some rules governing this situation. Accidents do happen but the more knowledge and training we can give coaches, the better. Parents also need to pay attention to who is coaching their kids. You don’t want to have to be calling an attorney because your kid got hurt when you could have checked out the coaches credentials yourself. Rules for the short skirts!