A former high school cheerleader in Michigan has sued Clarkston Community Schools in that state, alleging that the school district and some of its employees were negligent when they failed to prevent an accident, which resulted in a concussion.
In the fall of 2008, Lindsey Friend was a member of the Clarkston Junior Varsity Cheerleading Team. Only a ninth grader, Friend was participating in a practice on Sept. 29, 2008 when she fell to the ground “with great force and violence and suffered severe, grievous and permanent personal injuries.”
Friend suffered a concussion, a spinal cord injury, and a traumatic brain injury.
“I remember looking up at a bunch of faces, and I didn’t know any of them,” Friend said recently in an interview with the Leelanau Enterprise. “People kept asking me questions and I didn’t have the answers … I didn’t know if I was OK, where I was or what had happened.”
Friend would ultimately sue, alleging that she suffers from memory loss, post-concussive syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, suffering, discomfort and extreme physical and emotional suffering, severe embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, tension and mortification and the loss of the natural enjoyments of life.
“I knew my mom’s name was Nancy. That was it,” Friend told the paper. “I’m 18 years old and I only know what’s happened the past 3½ years. I lost my childhood. My family. my friends and family trips.”
The impact of the injury ultimately led Friend to move to another town. “It was just too hard (to stay there),” she said. “I was always the girl who forgot everything.”
Her complaint, which also names cheerleading coach Jaclyn Fahrner as a defendant, seeks an award “in whatever amount to which she is entitled to receive,” as well as legal costs.
Central to her claim is the fact that she was allegedly asked to perform a stunt called a “double down acrobatic maneuver.”
“Clarkston cheer coaches had a freshman in high school performing a stunt that is so inherently dangerous that it is now outlawed in most of the country,” Scott Erskine, Friend’s attorney, has told the media.
Complex stunts are part of a growing trend in cheerleading, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
“Cheerleading has become extremely competitive in the past few years, incorporating more complex skills than ever before,” said pediatric sports medicine specialist Cynthia LaBella, MD, FAAP, member of the AAP Council on Sports Medicine & Fitness and co-author of new guidelines distributed this fall (http://tinyurl.com/bmkdvq2). “Relatively speaking, the injury rate is low compared to other sports, but despite the overall lower rate, the number of catastrophic injuries continues to climb. That is an area of concern and needs attention for improving safety.”
Since the injury, Friend has been active, working with the National Cheer Safety Foundation and the Michigan Brain Injury Association to enlist support for the cause. She has also developed a website about the need to protect student athletes from concussions and circulated petitions in support of proposed legislation.
“I want to bring all the attention I can to this issue because I want the legislation passed,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I have.”
