I competed in sports acrobatics (now known as acrobatic gymnastics) back in the early 80’s. Whereas the more familiar form of gymnastics (technically called artistic gymnastics now) is the ultimate individual sport — just the competitor vs. the apparatus — acrobatic gymnastics is a total partner sport, with competitions for mixed pairs, men’s and women’s pairs, and men’s and women’s groups (4 and 3, respectively).

We would often work out at a local college, and there were many occasions when there would also be cheerleaders from the university working out at the same time. My acrobatic partners and I would be horrified by the difficulty level of the stunts those cheerleaders would try, often with no or inadequate spotting.

In the defense of cheerleading, I have since had the chance to interact with professional level cheerleaders and was extremely impressed by quality of the spotters that they worked out with. There would be a cadre of very large, very strong, and very agile men around, and no difficult stunts were attempted without first lining up adequate safety support.

I am happy that the state of the art has moved toward protecting the participants, at least at the upper echelons, but fearful that lower level programs still try to emulate the state of the art with respect to difficulty without having sufficient concern for safety.

On being a spotter: https://captainunivac.com/2017/06/10/i-am-a-spotter-june-10-2017/