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MOORE, Okla. (KOKH) — A cheerleading coach in Oklahoma has been arrested and she lost her job. She's accused of having a sexual relationship with a former student for five years. According to an affidavit, the alleged victim is in a rehab program in California, and he sent a detailed letter to Moore Public Schools, south of Oklahoma City. He said the sexual relationship started when he was a 16-year-old sophomore in 2017, and ended last October 2022. The coach, Jennifer Hawkins, reportedly explained the relationship began while the victim was living with her and her family for a few...

A Bucks County, Pennsylvania mother allegedly sent deepfake photos and video of her teenage daughter's cheerleading rivals to their coaches in a bid to get them kicked off the team. Investigators say 50-year-old Raffaela Spone was trying to get the girls kicked off the Victory Vipers, in Chalfont. Spone is accused of manipulating photos from the social media accounts of three girls to make it look like they were drinking and smoking, and even digitally altered them to make the girls appear naked. "The suspect is alleged to have taken a real picture and edited it through some photoshopping app...

They were there for all five of the Spurs’ NBA championship runs, dancing in the aisles, performing during halftimes, trying to liven up the crowd. From the early days of David Robinson to what might have been Kawhi Leonard’s final season in San Antonio, the Silver Dancers were part of the Spurs’ game day experience for more than a quarter-century. Leonard’s future remains uncertain, but the Silver Dancers are apparently done. The team is reportedly eliminating its longtime dance team, replacing it next season with a 35-member ‘family-friendly’ co-ed “hype team” that will feature tumbling and acrobatics.

EAST HANOVER, N.J. – Everybody makes the team. A New Jersey high school drew heat from students and parents for a new policy that says everyone makes the cheerleading squad or no one does. According to WCBS, the change came after a mother complained that her child didn’t make the cut. To make the cheerleading squad at Hanover Park High School, prospective members go through a tryout in which coaches score them on things like jumps and choreography before making their final picks for the team. But after the mother whose daughter didn’t make the squad complained after last month’s...

A number of officials at East High School in Denver came under fire in August when a disturbing video circulated showing cheerleaders repeatedly being pushed into splits. An incoming high school freshman screamed in pain and asked the coach, Ozell Williams, to “please stop” in one video. Her morther said she suffered injuries to her leg from the forced exercise. The leaked video caused a public uproar. The school’s principal retired and the athletic director resigned after the video was leaked; Williams was fired. Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg thanked the DA’s office for investigating the case, but...

It's football night in Marietta and, if you look closely among the cheerleaders on the field, you'll see a young girl with distinctive purple close-cropped hair. She and the other cheerleaders are enthusiastic as they belt out a cheer, "Let's fight, let's fight!" It's an appropriate chant for 11-year old Emma Barrientos, who is personally in the middle of a fight against high-risk leukemia. She is thrilled to be well enough to be back on the football field with her friends, and her parents are smiling and watching her from the stands. Earlier this week, she was back at Jimmy...

Lacy T. accused the Raiders in a lawsuit Wednesday of failing to pay the Raiderettes minimum wages for the work they do, both on the sidelines and in the community for charity. The team also sticks them with travel costs and levies "fines" that eat into their meager salary, she said. She filed her lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court as a proposed class action on behalf of 40 current Raiderettes and other members of the squad over the past four years. And she said she hopes other NFL cheerleaders will join the fray.

Cheerleading 'most dangerous sport for US women' Cheerleading causes two thirds of the very serious sports injuries suffered by girls in the United States and many concussions are not reported, according to a new study. By Nick Allen, Los Angeles 5:12PM BST 15 Sep 2013 Researchers found that the number of visits to casualty resulting from high school and college cheerleading injuries rose from 4,954 in 1980 to 26,786 in 2007. The sport accounted for around 66 per cent of "catastrophic" injuries – those resulting in permanent disability or medical conditions – to girls, research published in the Journal of...

In a perfect world, every father would think his daughter is beautiful. David Fraser agrees. "Yeah, but she's actually beautiful," he says of his own daughter, 15-year-old Jeana. "I mean, she looks like a cheerleader." Jeana is a cheerleader. A sophomore, she wears her uniform to Countryside High School on game days along with the rest of the squad. Or she did until Friday, when the school decided its own uniform was against the dress code. Several Pinellas County schools are restricting or banning their own cheerleading uniforms during classroom hours amid a broader crackdown on the student dress code....

Newser) – There are teams, uniforms, competitions, physical exertion, and plenty of injuries. But is cheerleading a sport? The NCAA says no. The American Academy of Pediatrics says yes. And now the American Medical Association will decide for itself, with a vote at its annual House of Delegates meeting this weekend, NPR reports. The decision is more than just semantics: Classifying cheering as a sport would mean more training for coaches in how to reduce and prevent injuries. That would probably be a good move, given the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research says "high school and college cheerleaders...

(CNSNews.com) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it was "wrong" for debate moderator Brian Williams to silence the "free speech" of the debate audience in Tampa. At the start of Monday night's debate, Williams said, "We've asked our invited guests here this evening to withhold their applause, any verbal reactions to what they hear on stage, so as to ensure this is about the four candidates here tonight and what they have to say." Never again, Gingrich told Fox & Friends the morning after: "I wish in retrospect I'd protested when Brian Williams took them (the live audience) out...

New documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent over one million taxpayer dollars promoting Obamacare in coordination with the 2010 mid-term elections. The documents include correspondence between HHS officials and representatives from The Ogilvy Group, the public relations firm hired to drive web traffic to an HHS site promoting Obamacare as "the Affordable Care Act." On October 25, 2010, HHS New Media Communications Director Julia Eisman sent an email to Ogilvy Senior Vice President Imani Green, reading, "Given the high performance, we're wondering if...

Nebraska girl born with no arms and legs has blamed unfair scoring after she failed to make her school's cheerleading squad three years in a row. Julia Sullivan, 16, has complained to the school board after she said she was given 'no accommodation for her disability' during try-outs. The wheelchair user did not make the team after she received a low score in the jumps/kicks category of the trials. Miss Sullivan got her highest marks in the communication skills and enthusiasm/spirit categories. The Aurora High School student, who said that she likes to dance, said: 'I just think it would...

Economy: "Welcome to the Recovery," said the headline over an op-ed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the New York Times. At first we thought it must be a joke, maybe even a parody. It wasn't. Welcome, indeed. The very same administration that promised unemployment wouldn't rise above 8% if we passed the $862 billion stimulus has dubbed the tepid economic rebound "recovery summer." They seem to think they deserve credit for the mess. "The combined effect of government actions taken over the past two years - the stimulus package, the stress tests and recapitalization of the banks, the restructuring...

A federal judge's ruling that cheerleading is not a sport has taken a longtime debate out of the courtroom and into homes, gyms, schools and colleges nationwide. The never-ending question: Are cheerleaders athletes? U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled Wednesday that Quinnipiac University in New Jersey could not replace its women's volleyball team with a competitive cheering squad, saying cheerleading is "too underdeveloped and disorganized" to be treated as an official collegiate sport.George W. Bush as a cheerleader at Andover Under the nation's Title IX regulations, which require universities receiving federal funds to offer equal athletic opportunities to both...

Federal Judge: Cheerleading Is Not a SportJudge Says Calling Cheerleading a Sport Violates Federal Gender-Equality Rules By RUSSELL GOLDMAN June 21, 2010 A judge in Connecticut has ruled cheerleading is not a sport -- and universities therefore cannot direct money to the activity to meet federal gender-equality regulations. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled Wednesday that Quinnipiac University violated the law when it pulled funding from its women's volleyball team to support a competitive cheerleading squad. "I conclude as a matter of law that Quinnipiac University discriminated on the basis of sex during the 2009-10 academic years by failing to...

Cheerleading was at the center of Laura Jackson’s life since she began shaking pom-poms for a pee-wee football team in the third grade. At 14, she dreamed of cheering in high school and then, maybe college. But on the day of tryouts for the freshman high school squad in Livonia, Mich., those plans were shattered. That afternoon, as her turn arrived, she got ready to perform a back tuck, a challenging gymnastics move she’d learned just for tryouts. She eyed her spotter, a girl just three years older than herself, and took a running start across the gymnasium floor before...

While Title 9 has increased the participation of young women in high school and college sports, it has done nothing to address the most serious source of catastrophic injuries for young women -- cheerleading. Data from the Consumer Products Safety Commission show that the number of catastrophic injuries -- those involving death or disability caused by head or spine trauma -- have grown from fewer than 5,000 in 1980 to 26,000 to 28,000 per year in the last few years, according to Dr. Amy Miller Bohn, a family medicine specialist at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor....

Cheerleading safety efforts have led to modest reductions in the number of serious injuries in recent years, according to a new report about college and high school sports and cheerleading mishaps. But cheerleading continues to cause more serious and deadly injuries by far than other sports. Researchers have long known how dangerous cheerleading is, but records were poorly kept until recently. An update to the record-keeping system last year found that between 1982 and 2007, there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority (67) occurring in cheerleading. The next most...

MADISON, Wis. — High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In a case closely watched in the cheerleading world, the court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a teammate who dropped her while practicing a stunt. The court also said the injured cheerleader cannot sue her school district for the coach's alleged lack of supervision.