What comes to mind when you hear those words?  Football?  Hockey?  Soccer?  Nope, none of these. It isn’t even boys who are the ones getting injured.

Move over football, hockey, soccer… the most dangerous sport is cheerleading.  Cheerleading causes more serious and fatal injuries than any other high school sport.

Consider the new numbers  for the 26-year period from the fall of 1982 through the spring of 2008:

* There were 1,116 direct catastrophic injuries in high school (905) and college sports (211).

* High school sports were associated with 152 fatalities, 379 non-fatal injuries and 374 serious injuries. College sports accounted for 22 fatalities, 63 non-fatal injuries and 126 serious injuries.

* Cheerleading accounted for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among all female sports.

This surprised me until I saw what sorts of moves cheerleaders were doing.  The tossing in the air and flips.  I inwardly cringed at the thought of one the girls being dropped.  Luckily, new safety protocol has been put in place and the injuries are have seen a steady decline.

So while accidental injuries are on the decline due to improved safety regulations and equipment, physicians are reporting, that across the board– throughout all different sports– an increase in preventable overuse injuries.  Children who are being pressured to keep performing even though they have an injury.  I see this all the time with teams that my sons’ play on.  Parents who don’t take their child’s complaints seriously, and also children (I am mostly talking about older kids and teens here) who refuse to stop playing. 

I had a conversation with a mother whose son has a shoulder injury and was told by the doctor to rest it and do *nothing* for 8 weeks, essentially ending the season for him.   Then the doctor would re-evaluate and possibly prescribe some physical therapy.  Do you think the son stopped playing?  Nope, he did not.  When I asked the mother she said he didn’t want to stop.  He was worried he would get kicked off the team.  When I asked why she was allowing him to continue playing with an injury she sort of shrugged and said, “Well what am I going to do.”

Hmmmmm, I wanted to introduce  her to this little word I use. ”No.” 

Sometimes it isn’t being fun being the parent and having to be the so-called “bad guy.”  But you are supposed to do it anyway, right?