Pain part of game for aerial athletes: In injury-filled sport, cheerleaders feel the brunt of their stunts.

Byline: Alan Bavley and Melodee Hall Blobaum

Jan. 9--Crystal Escobar has the battle scars of tough athletic competition: Five incisions where a surgeon reconstructed her battered right knee.

Crystal, a junior at William Chrisman High School in Independence, didn't blow out her knee on the basketball court or playing tennis.

She did it cheerleading.

"We have girls we throw into the air. When they come down on you, 120 pounds, it's hard," said Crystal, 17. "You always hurt. Every day. You bleed, your back is sore. The little stuff you don't complain about."

For those who still think cheerleading is all about shimmying and shaking on the sidelines, it's time to reconsider. Cheerleading has become a full-fledged sport, a rough and hazardous sport.

A new study estimates that 208,800 children ages 5 to 18 were injured while cheerleading from 1990 through 2002.

Moreover, the number of injuries per year has more than doubled during this 13-year period, from 10,900 to 22,900.

"We believe this is happening because cheerleading is incorporating all these fancy gymnastic moves," said Brenda Shields, lead author of the study published in the journal Pediatrics. "Flips, multilevel pyramids, partner stunts, throwing people 20 feet in the air. They're doing them on hard surfaces like basketball courts and football stadiums."…