Lawsuit raises liability issues

[Max]

Lawsuit raises liability issues

Officials, coaches still support sport
MICK GARRY
mgarry@argusleader.com
January 14, 2006, 2:55 am

When a former high school gymnast in Sioux Falls filed a negligence lawsuit against her coaches, her school and a Sioux Falls training facility last fall, it cast light on issues regarding the safety of athletes as well as the vulnerability of coaches.

Andrea Wilson, now a student at Princeton University, fell from the uneven bars during an O'Gorman High School team practice in January 2003 at All-American Gymnastics Academy. She suffered a spinal cord injury, resulting in permanent paraplegia.

The injury and pending litigation push to the forefront issues confronting schools and coaches every day.

If an athlete gets seriously hurt participating in a high school sport, and a coach and/or school is sued, could it discourage people from coaching or athletes from participating - particularly those involved in higher-risk sports such as gymnastics?

Coaches and state officials hope the answer to that question turns out to be no. Gymnastics is a sport already struggling nationally at the high school level, and another blow would not help the health of the sport in South Dakota.

"It could be a factor, but you could say that about any profession," Wayne Carney, executive director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association, said about the lawsuit. "If you're a college student, and you see that someone in the line of work you're pursuing has been successfully sued, it might make you think twice about getting into that profession."

What separates gymnastics from many other sports are the inherent physical demands placed on the athlete. It's just plain more dangerous than sports such as golf.

High school gymnastics coaches, who must be certified in South Dakota, say one tragic incident does not make a trend.

"I don't think one injury is going to determine whether a school is going to drop gymnastics," said Roosevelt coach Lori Warne, who has coached gymnastics for 22 years. "What happened was terribly unfortunate, but I don't think a kid is going to quit participating or a coach is going to stop coaching because of that."



http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs...601140319/1001

[roshni]

This injury alerts us to just how demanding (and potentially dangerous) gymnastics is. With accidents like this one, I don't think that coaches/schools are at fault.