School investigating cheerleading accident
By LA MONICA EVERETT-HAYNES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Cheerleading practice has been suspended at Prairie View A&M University while administrators investigate an accident that left one of the performers paralyzed.
Bethany Norwood, 22, remained Tuesday at Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital recovering from the Jan. 14 accident in which, after tossing her in the air, her teammates couldn't catch her. Norwood fell head first to the gym floor, damaging her spinal cord and breaking her neck in six places.
Norwood's injury comes at a time when cheerleading is becoming more widely recognized as a competitive sport and not just a skirt-swishing dance routine.
Cheerleading accounts for the majority of sports-related injuries to females at the high school and college levels, said Sally S. Harris, an expert in children and sports medicine at California's Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
"It's not the classic design when they cheer on the sidelines -- it's the same as gymnastics," Harris said.
Harris said most injuries occur when a team is making a pyramid or throws a teammate into a "basket-toss," which was the case at Prairie View.
Size or height typically doesn't matter in these types of cases, she said. "It's just that they are risky activities"
Harris cited research by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, which found that cheerleading was responsible for 57 percent of all sport-related injuries resulting in death or hospitalization of female college and high school athletes between 1982 and 2001.
"There is a lot of concern that girls are doing these very difficult maneuvers and don't have the same kinds of mats or the same skills in terms of spotters and coaches," she said.
Norwood's parents are criticizing the university's supervision of the squad at the time of her injury and are also questioning why she was lifted into the air when she usually tosses and catches cheerleaders.
University officials on Tuesday would not discuss the incident or what information they have gathered since Norwood fell.
"We don't know how it happened; we don't have the facts," Prairie View spokeswoman Diana Fallis said.
"We're sorry that it occurred and our hearts go out to the family," Fallis added. "Obviously, there is a great deal of concern about what happened."
Later Tuesday, Bobby Norwood, Bethany's father, said that a university administrator told him the adviser who should have been in the gym wasn't present when the accident happened.
"He told me she showed up after it happened," Norwood said.
The adviser, Janetta Gilliam, did not return calls made to her office Tuesday, and university officials would not comment.
It is the university's policy that a coach or an adviser be present when the team is practicing stunts. The cheerleading squad currently does not have a coach and is searching for one.
The 22-member group of male and female students usually practices from 5 to 7:30 p.m. four days a week but hasn't practiced since Bethany Norwood's injury, said Brian K. Dickens, director of the university's student activities and leadership.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Bethany Norwood's family is thanking God for small victories, Bobby Norwood said.
His daughter, a Prairie View senior who would like to be an attorney, is talking more and more with each passing day and has sugar cravings.
"Krispy Kreme doughnuts -- that's what she wants," Bobby Norwood said.
While lying in her hospital bed this week, Bethany also told her father: "Well, daddy, I can't go to school this semester, but I can study for my LSAT for law school," Norwood recalled.
"She's surviving," he said. "She's a very strong girl and very determined."
