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« Question for the Day | Main | Less-Forgotten Painters »

August 16, 2008

 Fact for the Day

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Cheerleaders109.jpg
High school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females over the past 25 years.
Source. Photo found here.

Best,

Michael

UPDATE: Enjoy loads of funny and smart comments at Marginal Revolution. My favorite: "I like human pyramids!"

posted by Michael at August 16, 2008




Comments

Not entirely surprising, given the aggressive "gymnasticism" of "cheerleading" today, and the absence of safety measures.

OTOH, the actual number of serious injuries is quite small. 67 high-school injuries over 25 years, with 95,000 participants each year: about 1 chance in 35,000 per year. I suspect that skiing and surfing are both more dangerous.

I do think it is interesting that cheerleading has become a sport in itself. When cheerleaders compete, are there cheerleaders for them?

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on August 16, 2008 2:12 PM

This is precisely why I decided to skip high school. I could tell it was dangerous.

Posted by: Sister Wolf on August 16, 2008 2:44 PM

It's one of those weird female-female competition things, like girls who torture themselves to look more fashionable than the unhip.

Guys would be happy to watch the Poms just shake their asses -- no need for gymnastic stunts to turn a guy on. But the girls who go into cheerleading are more tomboyish (like gymnasts) and hypercompetitive. They're not doing it to impress guys but to show that they're badder than the other girls, especially those bitches on Poms.

Patty Mayo is a cheerleader, btw. She has a few videos of her doing gymnastic / cheerleading stunts on her YT account.

Here

Posted by: agnostic on August 16, 2008 2:46 PM

It's not surprising that cheerleading accounts for a high percentage of catastrophic sports injuries among high school girls. What else could cause them? Girls don't play football, which is the only high school sport that has any real risk of serious injury. I'm assuming that ACL tears - unpleasant but not life-threatening - don't count as "catastrophic injuries" in this context, as females face especially high risks of these tears.

Posted by: Peter on August 16, 2008 4:16 PM


Did you ever see the Cheerleading documentary on TV where the girl dropping down from a formation into the other girls arms swings her elbow too far and knocks out 2 or 3 of one of the catchers' teeth? They just go flying out. The victim covers her mouth for a split second and then proceeds to finish the routine --wow that's tough.

sN

Posted by: sN on August 16, 2008 4:25 PM

I was a football hero in high school. My girl friend was the head of the cheerleading squad. Oddly, we never really got it on.

This was probably a good thing, because she would have gotten knocked up and I would have been living in an old farm house out in the middle of the corn fields, working for minimum wage at one of the local factories.

My 40th high school reunion was recently celebrated in my hometown... but I did not attend. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough. I did, however, get a full list of e-mail addresses of my classmates. Among them... the e-mail address of my old girlfriend.

I am sorely tempted to write to her. I don't know why. She had great tits.

Posted by: Shouting Thomas on August 17, 2008 9:31 AM

Well, that's why you're tempted, ST! And why you'd be disappointed, since they're probably not so great, now. :)

It's time to ban cheerleading competitions, and bring cheerleading back to what it used to be - hotties serving as decoration, and entertainment, for males' benefit. And they *should* have nice tits, as per ST's old flame, and not be about booty-shaking, like the repulsive Patty Mayo.

Posted by: anon on August 18, 2008 12:18 AM

Would any of you, guys, be so kind as to take time to explain to a Frenchman what the cheerleading is all about? What are these girls supposed to do? Are they supposed to support their team, or distract the other team, or maybe the referee? Or do they entertain the public if the match happens to be bad?

To me this is a deeper mistery than (say) the rules of baseball… One big cultural gap between we Europeans and you (like the supposed eroticism of pole-dancing, say).

And I still have to figure out wether I find the Poms sexy or not. Maybe they are too healty to be sexy…

Posted by: Philaretes on August 18, 2008 6:02 AM

anon - I think what you're looking for is a strip club.

Posted by: ty on August 18, 2008 1:02 PM

ty: Ha! I'm talking about high school girlies, not adult women, here; I'm thinking of our younger brothers, not yet adult men, able to go to peeler bars. ;) They should be able to enjoy girls being girls, and not being wannabe men, in terms of testerone-driven competitiveness that seems to infect cheerleaders today.

Posted by: anon on August 18, 2008 10:39 PM


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