Whether cheerleading is a sport at all could be the subject of great debate. But that’s just small potatoes: The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that cheerleading is a contact sport, just like football, and under Wisconsin law, you can’t sue someone for accidental injury in a contact sport. The case was brought by Brittany Noffke, a high school cheerleader who suffered a serious head injury when she fell off the shoulders of a teammate and another teammate failed to catch her. She sued her teammate, the school, the insurance company, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. A lower court found in her favor and the Supreme Court overruled them.
At first blush, it seems ridiculous to say cheerleading is a contact sport. But you know, I’m actually inclined to agree with the ruling. While there is no contact with another team, the risky contact in cheerleading is with your own team. I do wonder about the law, though. Baseball isn’t a contact sport, but you could get killed from an errant pitch. According to the law, you could sue over that. Seems odd that the law protects cheerleaders but not baseball players.
Hat tip to Antonious.
on Jan 29th, 2009 at 11:45 AM
Oh yes, it is a contact sport! For women in both high school and college , two-thirds of all severe sports injuries (from 1982 to 2007) were related to cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. Read the national center’s guidelines to help prevent cheerleading injuries at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/guidelines-to-help-prevent-cheerleading-injuries.html