Finally! They are making some changes to the cheerleading rules. They're cheerleading rules?
Kristi Yamaoka still winces when she thinks about the cheerleading misstep that made her a media darling, and a villain, in one jarring instant.
As television cameras rolled during the Missouri Valley Conference tournament title game last March 5, the 4-foot-9-inch Southern Illinois junior lost her balance and fell backward 15 feet off a human pyramid when she meant to roll forward into the arms of teammates.
Yamaoka's head smacked the floor of the Savvis Center in St. Louis with a sickening thud, stunning the crowd of 14,000.
As she was being wheeled off while strapped to a stretcher, the Saluki fight song began to play and Yamaoka suddenly began cheering with her arms--the only parts of her body not immobilized--in time with the band.
That sight, replayed repeatedly on ESPN and CNN, vaulted the former gymnast into the spotlight, landing her bookings on "Today," "Good Morning America," and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." President Bush gave her a call.
"It was an amazing reaction," recalls the 19-year-old Yamaoka, now largely healed from a fractured neck, concussion and bruised lung, and back on the cheerleading squad.
There also was a swift reaction from a national cheerleading organization, and strong criticism of Yamaoka by cheerleaders from around the country.
In the wake of Yamaoka's nationally televised fall, the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, which sets standards for cheerleading safety, recommended that college conferences bar cheerleaders from high pyramids and basket tosses--throwing a cheerleader into the air--without a mat.
"That could have been anyone," said Jim Lord, head of the national association. "Thank goodness, it wasn't something worse."
Statistics show that cheerleaders--who today more closely resemble gymnasts than the pompom-waving, megaphone-sporting yell leaders of yesteryear--suffer more serious injuries than any other female athletes.
In fact, cheerleaders account for more than half of the catastrophic injuries (head, neck and spinal cord damage) to female athletes, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina.
In 1980, nearly 5,000 cheerleaders visited emergency rooms; by 2004, that number had spiked to more than 28,000. Between 1982 and 2005, at least five cheerleaders died, two from injuries that occurred when a multilevel routine went awry and three because of heart problems.
Lord said the hazards of high pyramids raised concerns years ago, and Yamaoka's accident "was maybe the last straw."
Yamaoka said she quickly became the scapegoat of angry cheerleaders across the country.
The changes meant cheerleaders no longer could perform some of their biggest stunts during timeouts--only on the sidelines, during halftime or after a game--because they would not have time to drag mats on and off the court without delaying the game.
Online cheerleader forums, Yamaoka said, talked "about how SIU screwed everyone over." Someone created an unflattering profile about Yamaoka on a popular Internet social-networking site.
"It compromised my character and turned me into something I wasn't," she said of the online portrayal. "There are people out there that hate me because of all the rules changes, and they despise my squad."
Yamaoka calls the rule changes "a humongous overreaction," noting that tackling isn't banned from football when a player gets a concussion.
"We're not allowed to do things more than what high school teams are allowed to do," she said.
Insurers, and universities, are beginning to take note of cheerleading injuries.
Citing rising insurance costs, which now range from $30,000 to $75,000 a year, Florida Gulf Coast University in December told cheerleaders the school wouldn't pay those premiums for stunts or tumbling. Since then, the nearly two dozen cheerleaders have boycotted basketball games.
In January, 15-year-old junior varsity cheerleader Chelsea Kossiver of Satellite Beach, Fla., broke her neck while tumbling down a padded runway and flipping onto a cushioned landing. The freshman can walk but has permanent titanium plates and screws along her spine and has been ordered by doctors to give up the sport she loves.
Yamaoka feels lucky to have escaped the same fate. She recalls her impact with the floor and urging no one to touch her, figuring something was broken.
"The only thing I could think of was the massive humiliation of falling on my head in front of so many people," she said.
A year later, Salukis cheerleading coach April Bittle said the squad has moved on, relying more on tumbling and the use of signs in place of pyramids or high-flying routines. The rules changes "makes teams go back to focusing on crowd involvement," Bittle said.
Yamaoka thinks she's mended nicely. Her bruised lung, which caused her to cough up blood for a couple of days, no longer is an issue. She still has occasional soreness in her lower back, but frequent massage therapy helps.
"I have some bad days," said Yamaoka, a psychology major hoping to become an occupational therapist. "I feel lucky to be here. I had some amazing experiences and talked to amazing people. Usually when you fall and break your neck, it doesn't end up this positive."
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