Apr 15, 2008 — See The Dallas Morning News
Of 25,112 people expected to run in the Boston Marathon, 10,375 are women, the most ever. And the number of high school girls playing sports has risen from 300,000 in 1972 to more than 3 million, according to the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations. But there's another side to this terrific news: the more girls and women play sports, the more they, like boys and men, get hurt. And they hurt in different ways. Cheerleading is the leading cause of direct fatal and nonfatal injuries among high school and college women, according to the Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at UNC. "Cheerleading used to be about shaking pompoms," said center director Frederick O. Mueller. "Now it's about throwing people 20 feet in the air."
