Jeff Webb, the man who built cheerleading into a multibillion-dollar global sport, died on March 19, 2026, at age 76. His wife, Gina Webb, the woman who stood beside him through five decades of that journey, is now the head of a family navigating one of the most public legacies in American sports history.
Jeff Webb, born January 19, 1950, in Dallas, Texas, founded the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) in 1974 at the age of 24 – out of a single apartment, with one other person, and a vision that cheerleading could become something more than a sideline activity.
What followed was one of the most improbable business stories in American sports. By the time he stepped down from Varsity Spirit in December 2020, he had built it into a $4.75 billion enterprise that touched more than a million athletes a year.
The New York Times called him the man who “pioneered the gravity-defying acrobatics of modern cheer.” The cheerleading world simply called him“The Father of Modern Cheerleading.”
He died on March 19, 2026, in Memphis, Tennessee, two weeks after suffering a severe head injury during a game of pickleball. His family decided to remove him from life support. He was 76 years old.
Gina Webb: The Woman Behind the Empire, and What Comes Next for the Family
Gina Webbis, Jeff Webb’s wife and his confirmed survivor, was named in official statements released by Varsity Spirit and reported by The Spun, HuffPost, and multiple other outlets following his passing.
She is survived alongside the couple’s two children – a son, Jeffrey Webb, and a daughter, Caroline Webb Mason – as well as two grandchildren.
Gina has not been a public-facing figure like her husband was. Jeff Webb operated in the spotlight – building companies, appearing in the press, testifying before committees, publishing books, and hosting events across the cheerleading world and conservative media circles.
Gina’s presence in that story was steady and private. At public Varsity events, she stood beside him. In a Getty Images-documented appearance, Jeff walked the red carpet with his daughter Caroline Webb Mason at a Varsity Brands event, and the family was frequently photographed together at company milestones. But Gina has never sought the microphone, and Jeff never pushed her toward it.
The record shows that the family built their lives in Memphis, Tennessee, where Varsity Spirit relocated in the 1980s and where Jeff spent most of his adult career.
Memphis became the Webbs’ permanent home as the company grew from a camp operation into the sprawling enterprise that defined competitive cheerleading for a generation.
Jeff’s civic involvement in Memphis was deep – spanning St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital(a relationship that began in 2002 and to which Varsity Brands eventually pledged $10 million), the Boys Club of Memphis, Youth Villages, Le Bonheur Hospital, and the Memphis Arts Council, among others. That involvement was a family effort – and Gina was part of it.
Jeff and Gina Webb’s Children: Jeffrey and Caroline Webb Mason
Jeffrey Webb, their son, shares his father’s first name and has maintained a private profile. No public professional record for Jeffrey has been published in the immediate aftermath of his father’s passing, consistent with the family’s general approach to keeping personal lives away from the business spotlight.
Caroline Webb Mason is their daughter and the more visible of the two children in public records. She attended Varsity Brands events alongside her father and was photographed with him at company functions.
The “Mason” in her name indicates she is married, though her husband has not been named in any public record. Together, Jeff and Gina’s two children gave them two grandchildren – a detail confirmed across multiple obituary accounts.
Jeff’s brother, Greg Webb, was not just a sibling – he was one of the original five founders of the Universal Cheerleaders Association in 1974 and spent 30 years leading Varsity’s camp division, growing it from 3,000 to nearly 200,000 participants annually.
He also helped write the first set of cheerleading safety rules in partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations. His sister, Jenna Webb Hill, is also among the survivors named in the family’s official statement.
The Legacy Jeff Left – and What Gina Inherits
Jeff Webb’s career was enormous, complicated, and impossible to separate from the sport he built. On one side, he took cheerleading from a sideline activity to a globally recognized competitive sport, secured provisional recognition from the International Olympic Committee in 2021, launched the first nationally televised cheerleading competition on ESPN in 1981, and built organizations that reached millions of young athletes.
The ICU said he “spent his life transforming what just a sideline school activity was into one of the fastest growing sports in the world.”
On the other: Varsity Spirit faced federal antitrust litigation and a wave of sexual abuse cases within the cheerleading world. Varsity and its parent ultimately settled the antitrust case for $82.5 million in 2024 and a separate lawsuit for $43.5 million.
Webb defended his record until the end, telling Sportico: “Has Varsity made mistakes? Of course. This was a company that started from zero. It started from my apartment with one other person and me.”
In March 2025, production company September Club announced a feature documentary about Webb’s life, made with his full cooperation. Its current status following his death is unclear.
His book, “American Restoration: How to Unshackle the Great Middle Class”, was published in 2021. He served as co-publisher and chairman of Human Events and purchased The Post Millennial in 2022.
“How lucky am I?” he said in a Varsity Spirit video recorded before his passing. “How fortunate have I been to be able to have this idea, and to build on it and have fabulous people kind of hook their star to my vision and for us together to build this great thing.”
Gina Webb now leads that family forward. She has two children, two grandchildren, a brother-in-law who helped build the same company from its first summer camp, and a legacy that will be written about – and argued about – for a long time.
What isn’t argued is what Jeff Webb said directly: that the whole thing started from nothing, and that the people around him – including the family he came home to – made it what it became.
Additional Information:
- Jeff Webb earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma, where he served as a yell leader and was first hired by the National Cheerleaders Association before founding the UCA. He had planned to attend law school before cheerleading changed his path entirely.
- His brother Greg Webb was one of the five original co-founders of the Universal Cheerleaders Association in 1974 and spent three decades building the camp division that became the backbone of Varsity Spirit’s reach. Jeff and Greg built the company together from its earliest days.
- In July 2021, the International Olympic Committee granted cheerleading provisional recognition – a milestone Jeff described as “the culmination of my life’s work” – and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee followed suit two years later, recognizing USA Cheer as an affiliate organization.
