Cheerleading Pioneer Jeff Webb Dies at 76 After Pickleball Fall

Jeff Webb built competitive cheerleading from a sideline activity into a multibillion-dollar global sport. The fall that killed him came not on a competition floor but a pickleball court.

Webb, born January 19, 1950, passed away on March 19, 2026, at the age of 76. Varsity Spirit president Bill Seely told company employees in an email that Webb had been removed from life support two weeks after suffering a head injury during a game of pickleball. He had been hospitalized after the accident, and his family later decided to take him off life support. A family spokesperson described his death as a "tragic accident" without elaborating further. He died surrounded by family in Memphis, Tennessee.

His death was confirmed by Varsity Spirit, the company he founded in 1974, originally as the Universal Cheerleading Association. A former University of Oklahoma yell leader, Webb introduced partner stunts, pyramids, tumbling, and music into routines, helping move cheerleading beyond traditional sideline roles and toward a year-round competitive sport. He launched the first national cheerleading championships and brought competitions to living rooms across the country through televised broadcasts on ESPN.

The scale of what Webb created is staggering. Bain Capital purchased Varsity Brands in June 2018 for $2.5 billion, then sold it to KKR in 2024 for $4.75 billion, including debt. A Varsity Brands spokesman said Webb "played a pivotal role in shaping cheerleading as it exists today and in building a community that has impacted generations of athletes, coaches, and teams," and credited his work with the International Cheer Union, which reached a milestone in July 2021 when the International Olympic Committee granted cheerleading provisional recognition. A spokesperson credited Webb with bringing the sport to 120 countries and supporting 55 million athletes worldwide.

Webb officially cut all ties with Varsity in December 2020, as both he and the company faced mounting legal scrutiny over alleged antitrust violations and a wave of sexual abuse cases within cheerleading. Critics were not shy about their assessments during his tenure, with some calling him the "Dark Sith Lord" and "John D. Rockefeller with glitter," as the Daily Beast reported. He never denied building a dominant empire; he once said he was motivated not by money but by "discipline and keeping score."

Beyond cheerleading, Webb was deeply embedded in conservative media and politics. He served as senior editor and co-publisher of Human Events and purchased right-wing website The Post Millennial. He was also a mentor to Charlie Kirk, the right-wing influencer who founded Turning Point USA. Turning Point released a nearly 10-minute video tribute with a caption calling him a "visionary who helped shape a generation of young leaders" and a dear friend to Kirk.

Webb is survived by his wife, Gina Webb, son Jeffrey Webb, daughter Caroline Webb Mason, and two grandchildren. His children captured the private man behind the public empire in a joint statement: "To most people he is a legendary entrepreneur — to us, he was our soccer coach and on-demand comedian, our mentor and father-daughter dance partner, our solace and our source of strength."

For a sport now chasing Olympic inclusion, the loss lands hard. Webb was the singular figure who willed competitive cheerleading into legitimacy, and the court where he fell was the same ordinary recreational space where millions of Americans spend their afternoons — a reminder that pickleball's injury risks don't spare anyone, regardless of their legacy.