Jeff Webb, the Texas businessman who founded modern competitive cheerleading and served as an early mentor to the late Charlie Kirk, died Friday at the age of 76. He had been on life support for two weeks after suffering a serious head injury when he fell playing pickleball.

As reported by the Post, Turning Point USA announced the news on Friday, releasing a nearly 10-minute tribute video honoring Webb's legacy in both the conservative movement and American athletics.

The organization called him "a visionary who helped shape generations of young leaders" and "a dear friend to Turning Point USA and Charlie."

A Life That Spanned Two Revolutions

Webb's biography reads like two separate American success stories stitched together. At just 24 years old, he founded Varsity Spirit in 1974, transforming cheerleading from sideline enthusiasm into a genuine athletic discipline. He pushed for routines featuring more acrobatic and athletic elements and helped bring competitions to televisions across the country. A spokesperson said Webb "played a pivotal role in shaping cheerleading as it exists today."

That alone would have been a full life. But Webb's second act placed him at the center of one of the most consequential youth movements in modern conservative politics.

Webb met Charlie Kirk when Kirk was just 24, and he recognized something immediately. In an interview with One America News Network, Webb described what he saw in the young activist:

"He had amazing drive. I was overwhelmed with his maturity, his intelligence. He just had so many incredible leadership qualities."

That instinct proved right. Kirk went on to build Turning Point USA into the most influential pipeline for young conservatives in the country, becoming an ally of President Trump and earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded posthumously after Kirk was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University last September.

What Webb Understood About Young Conservatives

Webb's reflections on Kirk and the movement he built reveal something important about what Turning Point actually accomplished on the ground level. It wasn't just political organizing. It was a community.

Webb described the young conservatives Kirk reached as people who had been adrift, not because they lacked convictions, but because they lacked company. Speaking to Real America's Voice, Webb laid it out plainly:

"They were isolated and Charlie's message and his just charisma gave them definition. It gave them hope. It made them feel that they were okay and what they stood for were good things. And then eventually as he created Turning Point and the conferences, he was able to bring those young people from around the country together and they discovered other people felt like they did, and they had friends all over the country who shared this belief."

That observation carries weight precisely because Webb wasn't a political operative by trade. He was an entrepreneur who had already built something from nothing once before. He understood what it takes to create a culture, not just an organization, and he recognized that Kirk was doing exactly that for a generation of young people told by every institution around them that their values were wrong.

Webb called Kirk a "giant of the MAGA movement" and said he "had it all — charisma, faith, respect for everyone." After Kirk's assassination last year, Webb attended the ceremony where the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded. He told Real America's Voice the country "may have lost a future president."

Two Losses, One Movement

The conservative movement has now lost both men within months of each other. Kirk violently, at 31, in front of a crowd. Webb quietly, at 76, from a fall on a pickleball court. The circumstances could not be more different. The void is compounding.

What Webb brought to the movement wasn't ideology. It was credibility earned in an entirely different arena and invested in a cause he believed in. When a man who revolutionized an American sport looks at a 24-year-old political organizer and says, "This kid has it," that carries a different kind of authority than another endorsement from another think tank.

Turning Point said it simply: "He will be greatly missed."

The organization Webb helped shape will carry on. The sport he invented will carry on. But the particular gift of people who can spot greatness early and nurture it before anyone else is paying attention is rare. Jeff Webb did it twice, in two completely different worlds. That kind of eye doesn't come around often.