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BERKELEY — A former University of California at Berkeley cheerleader claims that coaches ignored her concussion symptoms and forced her to perform stunts anyway, leading to more injuries and her ultimate withdrawal from the university, according to a lawsuit.
Melissa Martin filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court on Wednesday against the school, her coaches and USA Cheer, which oversees the sport nationally, seeking damages and asking that “reasonable concussion protocols” be implemented for collegiate cheerleaders.
“I felt alone and voiceless for a long time,” Martin said Thursday. “We often talk about football players receiving concussions, but rarely do we talk about other sports and, more specifically, rarely do we talk about female athletes experiencing concussions.”
Martin, 23, was a member of the Berkeley cheerleading squad from 2017-2018, according to the complaint, and suffered a serious concussion during an October 2017 practice when a teammate kicked her in the head. The suit alleges that Martin suffered a severe headache later that night as well as other concussion-like symptoms.
Head coach Lisa Keys, the suit claims, discouraged her from seeking medical attention and later forced her to perform while still suffering from concussion-like symptoms.
Martin’s symptoms were exacerbated, according to the lawsuit, when she was expected to attend rallies, practices and games even while not performing because of exposure to loud noise and bright lights.
Keys declined to comment in an email, referring questions to university officials. A UC Berkeley spokesman, Herb Benenson, said the university had not been served with the lawsuit.
“While we cannot discuss specific individual cases due to privacy rights, we can talk about our processes,” Benenson said in an email. “Cal Athletics closely follows the dictates of a comprehensive policy on concussion management. This policy includes essential elements of concussion education and protocols for management of concussion.”
A spokesperson from USA Cheer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jennie Anderson, a San Francisco lawyer representing Martin, said the cheerleader hopes the lawsuit “sends a message that safety protocols need to be robust and strictly followed and applied to all of the athletes, including cheerleaders. For an athletic department at a world-class university such as UC Berkeley, there is just no excuse not to offer and demand the highest level of medical care to all of its athletes, who are also students at that institution.”
Cheerleading has one of the highest concussion rates in school sports, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2012, the academy also reported that cheerleading accounted for 70 percent of all direct catastrophic injuries to women collegiate athletes. Catastrophic injuries included skull fractures, cervical spine injuries, brain injury or concussions, paralysis and death.
Martin was re-injured several times during the months following her first injury, the complaint alleges, and took a medical leave of absence from school in September 2018. Since then, symptoms such as nausea and confusion have continued to “radically impact her daily life,” according to the complaint.
The complaint said that Martin has been diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome. She suffers from depression and anxiety over her inability to return to her normal life, it says, and had dysfunctional binocular vision, “making it difficult for her to use both eyes together and maintain a single image for reading.”
“I am constantly worried about whether my brain is functioning properly even now because I still experience so many symptoms,” she said in an interview.
Martin said she has re-enrolled at the school for her final semester and is majoring in Society and Environment. She said she already is behind in classwork because “it’s challenging to concentrate during class and do my homework.”
Martin grew up in Chicago where she participated in gymnastics for 13 years, Anderson said.
The Cal cheerleading team has 19 members, according to its website. Keys, of Oakdale, has been involved in cheerleading for 20 years, according to UC Berkeley’s website. A LinkedIn page under her name says she has been the squad’s head coach since 2015.
The lawsuit alleges that school officials did not implement the concussion management plan that was created for the athletics department. The complaint also says it appears the school regards the cheerleading squad as “half-letes.”
“Team members are denied basic health and safety measures enjoyed by athletes on the very teams they support,” the complaint said.
