Cheerleading/Spirit

What makes Friday Night Lights so special, in Texas and around the country, is more than just football, says one mom; it is also about cheerleaders, drill teams, and marching bands, whose hard work and talent deserve just as much recognition from the community as the other athletes on the field.

According to a recent survey, cheerleaders are more likely than the average teen girl to volunteer, join an organization, and take leadership positions in their school.

Girls who play sports more than 8 hours per week are twice as likely as their less active peers to suffer a stress fracture, a new study finds. Most at risk were those engaged in three activities (running, basketball and cheerleading/gymnastics) which involve repeated jumping and landing which place particuarly high stress on bone, with the risk of injury increasing about 8 percent for each extra hour of activity over four per week.

In rejecting the argument that competitive cheer at Quinnipiac Univeristy was a sport, a federal court in Connecticut agreed with the federal Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights' (OCR) that its criteria for qualifying as a sport - including having a defined season and spending more time competing than supporting other teams - had not been met.  

College cheerleaders are at high risk for body image issues and eating disorders - and may be affected by how revealing their uniforms are, according to a study presented at the American College of Sports Medicine's 57th Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

Four spirit rule changes for the 2009-10 season approved by the NFHS are designed to minimize safety risk of certain stunts.