MSNB
Aug. 21, 2008 3:18 pm
Gymnasts sometimes fall off the beam. Basketball players often crash to the court. Softball players have unfortunate meetings of face and pitched ball. But when young women turn out for high school and college sports, odds are it’s the cheerleaders who are most at risk, new research shows.
Cheerleading, in fact, is far more dangerous than any other women’s sport, accounting for 65 percent of all catastrophic injuries in high school girls’ athletics and 67 percent in colleges. Those figures emerged in a 25-year study published this month by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina.
The next most dangerous sports, gymnastics and track, were far behind, causing 9 percent and 7 percent of all catastrophic injuries, respectively, since 1982.
Note: If you intend to do your own research on this subject, don't do a Google search on "cheerleaders." I was aghast at the sites that turned up.
No comments:
Post a Comment