TodayDecision elicits no cheers
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Article RatingImagine that a professional sports team closed down its operations for the season as the result of a single incident of an athlete being injured.
That's probably too silly to contemplate. Football, baseball, basketball, they all have their disabled lists. Someone wrenches a shoulder or a knee, they get state-of-the-art medical care and they go on the list with a handful of their teammates who are already nursing similar injuries. The same situation holds in organized amateur sports.
But what about the cheerleaders? Older folks may assume their role is to serve as eye candy, egg the home team on and do little more, but in recent years cheerleaders have really ramped up their acts to include physically strenuous and creatively intricate stunts, including pyramids, lifts and full body tosses.
Indeed, cheerleader squads nowadays are easily as competitive with each other as the teams they turn out to support. But as they adopt more ambitious programs, they also risk more injuries.
This situation has proven intolerable to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, which sets the rules for student sports in the 14 universities that comprise the State System of Higher Education. For reasons apparent to only themselves, they've ordered cheerleaders to knock off the stunts. And they've done so at the height of football season, when the cheerleaders typically would have their largest audiences.
Needless to say, the cheerleaders at our own local SSHE school, Shippensburg University, are up in arms. They can't perform, they can't rehearse in school facilities, and they'll probably have to cancel their annual cheerleading competition, which raises funds so the team can compete at tournaments.
In possibly the most annoying aspect to these adult women, the SU cheerleaders are banned from doing stunts that cheerleading squads at neighboring high schools don't have to give a second thought to performing.
The PSAC's e-mail cites only unspecified "incidents that have occurred recently during PSAC football" games in support of the ban, saying it intends to review the issue through the end of the year. PSAC originally issued a ban last April but later backed off as long as cheerleading coaches had safety certification. Now it's back to its original position.
If the PSAC's deliberations are designed to come up with consistent, enforceable safety rules for the cheerleaders, we're all for it. If they're simply trying to keep a legal flank covered in regard to one of those unspecified incidents, well, it's understandable if a bit cowardly.
But as an SU cheerleader pointed out to The Sentinel, one of the university's football players died during summer practice this year, yet the team wasn't restricted to playing touch football for the 2006 season.
We occasionally hear sad stories about football players who lose a year of eligibility to play college ball through some nitpicky interpretation of an obscure NCAA rule. Here's a bureaucratic decision that deprives 14 entire cheerleading squads of a full year of competitive action.
Cheerleaders may not have opportunities for lucrative performing contracts at the same level as football players, but they're certainly every bit as serious about their sport -- some of the SU cheerleaders told The Sentinel they chose their school for its cheerleading reputation.
Hopefully the PSAC won't take too long to bring its understanding of modern-day cheerleading up to speed. Perhaps the members could rent "Bring It On," a comedy from 2000 that features the sport at its current-day state of the art -- pyramids, tosses and all.
