The routine was simple. A roundoff and three back handsprings, finishing with a layout. Hands and feet springing off the ground. An airborne body tight and compact as it effortlessly glided down the pathway.
Iowa cheerleader Austin Beam has performed the sequence countless times. He’s been tumbling ever since he started gymnastics at 11 years old. The Hawkeye cheerleading team had featured the tumbling pass for more than two decades in its “Lone Ranger” performance during basketball games.
But on the night of Jan. 21, a collision between head and hardwood cast an eerie silence across the crowd at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. They had come for Iowa men’s basketball’s game against Minnesota, but the contest didn’t matter then. Second-year cheerleader Jenna Francois had performed ahead of Beam, and hearing this unusual reaction, turned around to see her teammate and longtime friend laying on the floor, motionless.
“I obviously just could tell Austin was hurt,” Francois told The Daily Iowan. “So, my first instinct was to just go up to him.”
Paramedics and other medical professionals arrived on the scene moments later. As the crowd around Beam grew larger, all that could be heard was low music over the speakers and the squabble of walkie-talkies.
“It’s very scary,” Iowa cheerleading assistant coach Ashley Stahr said, who witnessed the scene from the media table on the court. “What happened was a complete and total freak accident. We’ve never seen it. Not to say that it doesn’t happen, but not usually on the performance surface.”
Beam said he doesn’t remember losing control during the back handspring or hitting the ground. He recalled the crowd’s applause as he exited through the arena tunnel in a neck brace and on a stretcher, extending a thumbs up as he disappeared from view. The next thing he knew, he was looking up at doctors from the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, where he stayed for three to four hours and underwent multiple tests and scans.
“The precautionary stuff: the neck brace, the, ‘Don’t move, don’t move,’” Beam said. “You kind of always assume the worst.”
Beam was diagnosed with a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade, certainly not the most dire outcome, but still one that has his left arm in a sling and a four to six week recovery timeline before he returns to the sport he loves.
While Beam’s injury garnered much media attention for its apparent severity at the time, the cheerleader’s accident is a blip on the radar in a sport that, like any, has its potential dangers but prioritizes safety above all else. For Beam and his teammates and coaches, cheerleading isn’t a hobby but a dedication — a honed craft governed by rules and regulations.
“It’s unfortunate that [the accident] happened in public, because then it reinforces the stigma that cheerleading is unsafe,” Stahr said. “I think that’s kind of where it comes from. It’s mostly like misunderstanding or not knowing exactly what the sport entails and what we do on a daily basis.”
The team practices year-round for two and a half hours, four times a week, in addition to multiple weightlifting sessions. Practice used to be held on the basketball courts of the Iowa Field House, oftentimes sharing the space with people playing volleyball, pickleball, or other activities. Performing with mats dragged onto the hardwood and a Bluetooth speaker in the corner, the space was never really their own.
Practices significantly changed with the opening of the Nagle-Duda Gymnastics and Spirit Squads Training Center on Jan. 29. The $20 million project broke ground in December 2023 with plans to host Iowa women’s gymnastics, dance team, cheerleading squad, and mascot crew.
The new facility features an 85-by-60-foot practice room for the spirit squad with more than 2,000 feet of mat space, not to mention locker rooms and a meeting area. Such a scene was a far cry for head coach Gregg Niemiec, who took over the role 29 years ago a few years after graduating from Northern Illinois University.
“When I first moved here, the team didn’t have any mats, which kind of blew me away being a safety supervisor. I was like, ‘You guys aren’t practicing on mats?’” he said, eyes wide.
Niemiec took swift action, purchasing mats from the athletic department and making them a part of practice. The mats are used for stunts, which are building performances such as a pyramid. For tumbling, the team would utilize the gymnastics facility at the Field House and now rely on the gymnastics room at the new training center, which features tumbling tracks — which are long, trampoline-like platforms — as well as springboards and a foam pit.
Stunting and tumbling have their own respective risks, but each are managed by progressions, Niemiec and Stahr explained. No one just attempts a new skill without going through preliminary steps. There’s even a screening process to join the team. For Beam, he had to submit videos of his performances while others tried out at local clinics the team hosted.
For stunts, a university athletic trainer is always present. The team doesn’t have its own but splits between ones for gymnastics and volleyball. Pyramids can be a maximum 2.5 people tall, meaning one person standing on another’s shoulders with another person halfway above them. Niemiec said the team requires a spotter in the front and back of each pyramid at all times.
“When we’re practicing those, we overdo it,” Niemiec said. “As we’re starting something for the first time, we got, like, the whole team around it that’s not involved, making sure everybody gets up and down safe. As we perfect it more, we’ll pull some of those [extra spotters] off.”
In cheerleading, tumbling occurs on a dead mat, meaning there’s no springs involved. But Niemiec and Stahr explained those conditions are only featured once the cheerleader has a complete grasp of the skill they’re attempting. The cheerleader first tries out the skill with the tumble track and foam pit before removing the foam pit and then transitioning to dead mats.
Yet, even with safety protocols, injuries are unavoidable, but their frequency rates fall behind multiple other sports. Cheerleading ranked 17th in injury rate out of 20 surveyed U.S. high school sports during the 2023-24 school year, according to data from the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention, a nonprofit research institute based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Cheerleading’s rate of 1.05 injuries per 1,000 athletic exposures ranked between baseball and boys’ cross country. 68 of the reported 87 injuries occurred in practice.
Many of the protocols Niemiec and Stahr discussed, such as the rule about spotters, are found in the college cheerleading rulebook from USA Cheer, a nonprofit organization established in 2007 to serve as the sport’s national governing body. Its rules are updated each year for clarification and modification purposes. Niemiec and Stahr are both certified as coaches by the organization and are required to follow the rulebook.
Collegiate cheerleading is divided into two organizations that hold national championships – the Universal Cheerleading Association, known as UCA, and the National Cheerleading Association, the NCA. Iowa competes in the former. While the NCA has a greater emphasis on tumbling, both adhere to the safety regulations of USA Cheer.
Each August, Iowa attends a UCA camp in the Wisconsin Dells where cheerleaders learn new skills, and coaches attend seminars on rule changes. This trip marks the start of the journey to nationals, which occur every January in Orlando, Florida. This was the last competition Beam competed in before his injury.
“We went in and did our best,” Beam said of nationals. “As long as we’re happy with what we put on the mat, we don’t really care about the other stuff.”
Beam’s injury on Jan. 21 wasn’t his first, and it might not be his last. But Beam has no intention of letting that back handspring mark the end of his journey in the sport. He attended the team’s first practice at the new facility. Francois called him “one of the most passionate cheerleaders I’ve ever met.”
“I think the amount of time all of us spend together really brings us close. With the sport that we’re in, we all have to have full trust in each other, ” Francois said of the team. “Not only does our passion for the sport bring us together, but we all love each other outside of the sport as well.”