MVC bans some cheerleader stunts at women's tournament

~ The conference adopted new rules after a SIU cheerleader was injured in the men's title game.

ST. LOUIS -- Citing a Southern Illinois University cheerleader's 15-foot fall onto her head, the Missouri Valley Conference has barred its cheerleaders from certain airborne stunts during its women's basketball tournament this week, the league's chief said Tuesday.

A committee with the 10-team conference on Monday agreed to bar cheerleaders from being launched or tossed and from taking part in formations higher than two levels during the tourney, which begins Thursday, MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin said.

Schools that later advance to the NCAA or NIT tournaments may decide whether their cheerleaders should follow that ban, though the MVC will decide during its May meeting whether to make the restrictions permanent, Elgin said.

The move follows the scare involving Salukis cheerleader Kristi Yamaoka, who suffered a concussion and a cracked neck vertebra when she fell about 15 feet onto her head during a time-out late in Sunday's MVC men's championship game here.

Yamaoka said she didn't think the accident should change cheerleading.

"I don't want anyone to be restricted based on one little thing that happened to me," she said during a news conference at Saint Louis University Hospital.

A hospital spokeswoman said it was unclear when Yamaoka would be released, although she said a full recovery was expected.

Yamaoka gained national attention when she was shown giving a two-handed thumbs up while strapped to a gurney, then making cheer moves with her arms in time to the band's playing of the university fight song as she was wheeled off the court.

"My only thought then was that I knew how important this game was to the Sulukis," said Yamaoka, an 18-year-old sophomore from Springfield, Ill.

Yamaoka said she barely remembered the midcourt tumble, when she was supposed to dismount a three-level human pyramid to the front, where two cheerleaders were ready to catch her. Yamaoka lost her balance and tumbled off the back, striking her head on the wooden court.

"I think the entire country was holding its collective breath when she got hurt," said Elgin, among the 14,000 onlookers at the Savvis Center. "I've never experienced that type of total silence there. It scared the daylights out of all of us."

Elgin said Monday's move was meant to prevent, at least for now, similar types of accidents in light of such issues as risk management, insurance and safety.

"We're very concerned when something like this happens," Elgin said. "We don't want to curtail unnecessarily anything viewed in cheerleading culture as routine. But we don't want the risk of serious or catastrophic injuries."

While thrilled that Yamaoka is expected to fully recover from her injuries, Elgin said it was unfortunate media accounts of the accident overshadowed those about the game, which Southern won 59-46 over Bradley for the Salukis' fifth-straight berth in the NCAA tournament.

Yamaoka's accident came at a time of renewed awareness about cheerleading risks, with a study published in January in the journal Pediatrics showing that injuries in the activity more than doubled from 1990 through 2002 while participation grew just 18 percent over the same period.

During that 13-year period, the study estimates, 208,800 people ages 5 to 18 were treated at U.S. hospitals for cheerleading-related injuries. Most of the injuries were suffered by 12- to 17-year-olds; nearly 40 percent were leg, ankle and foot injuries.

Almost all the patients in the study were treated at emergency rooms and released. But because researchers used only ER numbers gathered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the true number of those injured is even greater, since many kids are treated at doctors' offices or by team trainers, researchers said.

Yamaoka was undaunted. She said she hopes to try out for next year's cheerleading squad in mid-April.

"Life is full of risks -- you can die at any moment," she said. "So I wouldn't give up cheerleading just because it's risky."

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On the Net:

Missouri Valley Conference, www.mvc-sports.com

American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators, www.aacca.org