Jeff Webb, the man who turned cheerleading from a sideline pastime into a multibillion-dollar global sport, died on March 19, 2026, at age 76. In the days that followed, two people stepped forward to speak for the family, not executives, not colleagues, but his children: a son, Jeffrey Webb, and a daughter, Caroline Webb Mason. Together, they are now the private face of one of the most consequential legacies in American sports history.
Born January 19, 1950, in Dallas, Texas, Webb founded the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) in 1974 at just 24 years old, out of a single apartment, alongside one other person, with a belief that cheerleading could be something far greater than a halftime distraction.
What followed was one of the most unlikely success stories in American sports. By the time he stepped away from Varsity Spirit in December 2020, he had built it into a multibillion-dollar enterprise, one that would eventually be valued at $4.75 billion, reaching more than a million athletes every year. The cheerleading world came to know him simply as the Father of Modern Cheerleading.
He died on March 19, 2026, in Memphis, Tennessee, two weeks after sustaining a severe head injury during a game of pickleball. His family decided to remove him from life support. He was 76 years old.
Jeffrey Webb and Caroline Webb Mason: The Children Jeff Webb Raised Away from the Spotlight
Jeffrey Webb and Caroline Webb Mason are Jeff Webb’s two children, confirmed as survivors in official statements released by Varsity Spirit and reported by NBC News in the days following his passing. They are survived alongside their mother, Gina Webb; their uncle, Greg Webb; and their aunt, Jenna Webb Hill.
Despite spending five decades at the very centre of American sports, testifying before committees, commanding press conferences, and building organisations that touched 55 million athletes across 120 countries, Webb kept his children firmly out of that glare.
Jeffrey and Caroline grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, where Varsity Spirit relocated in the 1980s and where the Webb family put down permanent roots.
Neither child has a significant public profile. Neither sought one. In that sense, they are very much their father’s children: private, purposeful, and defined by what they do rather than what they say.
Jeffrey Webb: The Son Who Shares His Father’s Name and His Privacy
Jeffrey Webb, Jeff Webb’s son, carries his father’s given name and, apparently, his father’s instinct for discretion. No professional public record for Jeffrey has emerged in the immediate aftermath of his father’s passing, no corporate profile, no biography, no public-facing role.
That is consistent with how the Webb family has always operated: building one of the largest empires in American sports while keeping the details of their personal lives quietly their own.
What Jeffrey has chosen to share publicly, however, speaks clearly enough. In the joint statement he co-authored with his sister Caroline, reported by Mercury News, he described a man the world had never fully seen: not the CEO who built a $4.75 billion company, but the soccer coach who showed up on weekends, the on-demand comedian who kept the family laughing, the source of strength at the end of difficult days.
That version of Jeff Webb, the domestic one, the personal one, is the version his son chose to put on record. Beyond that statement, Jeffrey remains where he has always been: away from the microphone.
Caroline Webb Mason: The Daughter Who Stood Beside Him
Caroline Webb Mason is Jeff Webb’s daughter and, of the two children, the one with the more visible presence in public records.
She attended Varsity Brands events alongside her father over the years and was photographed with him at company milestones, a steady presence at the edges of an empire that defined competitive cheerleading for a generation.
The surname Mason confirms she is married, though her husband has not been identified in any published account.
What sets Caroline apart in the aftermath of her father’s passing is not her appearance at company functions but her role in shaping how the world will remember the man behind them.
She co-authored both joint statements released to the press following Jeff Webb’s death, and in doing so, gave the public the most intimate portrait of her father that anyone outside the family had ever received.
The decision to lead their tribute by calling their father their “soccer coach and on-demand comedian” before a legendary entrepreneur was deliberate. It was an act of humanisation, one that ensured the record included the father, not just the founder.
What Jeffrey and Caroline Said When Their Father Died
When Jeff Webb died, his children did not retreat into silence. They released two joint statements that, taken together, form the fullest picture of their father they have ever offered publicly.
The first, reported by Mercury News and Town & Country Today, drew the clearest possible line between the public Jeff Webb and the private one:
“Our father was, at his core, a man of inexhaustible energy…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.”
The second, confirmed by NBC News, reached beyond grief toward gratitude: their father, they said,
“taught us by example that a life well lived contains balance, that seriousness and silliness are not in fact opposites…He was life, personified. He was a singular figure and an extraordinary father; we miss him dearly, and we will love and honor him forever.”
The Legacy His Children Now Carry Forward
Jeff Webb’s record is, by any measure, staggering. He launched the first nationally televised cheerleading competition on ESPN in 1981.
In July 2021, the International Olympic Committee granted cheerleading provisional recognition, a milestone he described as the culmination of his life’s work.
Beyond cheerleading, he was a conservative media figure, co-publisher of Human Events and buyer of The Post Millennial in 2022, and a close mentor to the late Charlie Kirk. His book, American Restoration: How to Unshackle the Great Middle Class, was published in 2021. Webb was buried in a private ceremony on March 22; a larger celebration of life is being planned.
That legacy is not uncomplicated. Varsity Spirit faced federal antitrust litigation and sexual abuse allegations, ultimately settling for $82.5 million in 2024 and $43.5 million in a separate suit.
What Jeffrey Webb and Caroline Webb Mason inherit is enormous, complicated, and worth debating for years to come. What is not debatable is what they chose to say: that the man who built all of it showed up at the soccer field too, and at the father-daughter dance, and whenever they needed him most.
That is the version of Jeff Webb his children will carry forward, and by all indications, the one they intend to protect.
Additional Information
- Jeff Webb earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma, where he served as a yell leader. He had planned to attend law school before cheerleading permanently changed the course of his life.
- His brother Greg Webb was one of the five original co-founders of the UCA in 1974 and spent three decades growing the camp division from roughly 3,000 to nearly 200,000 participants annually. Greg also helped draft the sport’s first formal safety guidelines alongside the National Federation of State High School Associations.
- Webb’s civic roots in Memphis ran deep; his relationship with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital began in 2002 and eventually led to a $10 million pledge from Varsity Brands, with further involvement spanning the Boys Club of Memphis, Youth Villages, Le Bonheur Hospital, and the Memphis Arts Council.
