San Jose State University has prohibited its cheerleading squad from performing aerial stunts for at least the rest of this athletic season after a former American High School student was paralyzed when she fell during a practice last month.

Rechelle Sneath, 18, of Fremont fell head-first to the ground during a "basket-toss" maneuver Jan. 7, fracturing a vertebra. Since the accident, she has undergone surgery at San Jose Hospital and rehabilitation at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, before being released last week. It is unknown whether she will walk again, though family and doctors are hopeful.

"I have a lot of faith in God, and that helps me a lot," Sneath said.

Lawrence Fan, San Jose State's sports information director, said he cannot remember a major cheerleading accident at the university since he started working there in 1980.

For the rest of the season, university officials will adopt the safety guidelines of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors and the National Cheer Association, Fan said. Cheerleaders will not be permitted to perform the tumbles, cartwheels, aerial tosses and other acrobatics that have come to characterize the activity.

"At least for the immediate future, San Jose State wants its Spirit Squad members to have at least one foot on the floor at all times," Fan said.

The university will re-evaluate the safety guidelines for next season, Fan said.

Although this appears to be the first major injury to a cheerleader at San Jose State, it was at least the second case nationwide in the first month of this year.

On Jan. 14, Bethany Norwood, 22, fell head-first onto the gymnasium floor during a basket-toss at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. Her neck was broken in six places. She may be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

Two months before that, a 14-year-old cheerleader at Hunt High School in Wilson, N.C., fell and hit her head during a practice. The teenager, Katherine Yount, was put in a medically induced coma to keep down brain swelling.

Such severe injuries due to cheerleading, though, are relatively rare compared with those due to other high school and college activities, according to data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

From 1982 through 2002, two cheerleaders died and 44 were seriously injured, according to the data. In contrast, 97 football players died and 525 were seriously injured in the same period.

Cheerleading-related injuries are on the rise, however. The number nationwide more than doubled to almost25,000 from 1991 to 2002, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

And some schools, such as San Jose State, have taken action.

After the University of Nebraska paid a $2.1 million settlement to a woman paralyzed in a cheerleading accident in 1996, school officials announced they no longer would allow routines that require cheerleaders to leave the ground.

The university later relaxed the policy somewhat, but it still prohibits tumbling, pyramids and basket-tosses, in which a cheerleader is tossed into the air by three or more others.

Sally Harris, a sports medicine expert with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, said in a 2002 presentation to an American Academy of Pediatrics conference that as cheerleading has grown more athletic and more competitive, it also has grown more dangerous.

AACCA members, though, believe cheerleading is a relatively safe activity that requires athletic skill, proper supervision and training.

To read the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors' safety guidelines for high school and college cheerleading, visit www.aacca.org