Achy athletes - injury rates in high school athletics - News Briefs: Health/Fitness
Science World, March 11, 1994 by Chana Freiman
Heads up: Which high school athletes have the highest rate of injury? If you said tough-guy football jocks, guess again. In a recent study, girls' cross-country runners came out on top (see chart).
Surprised? So was chief researcher Stephen Rice. From 1979 to 1992, while working to improve sports-injury management in schools, Rice collected data on 18 high school sports involving 60,000 teen atheletes. He found that for every 1,000 athletic exposures (times athletes practiced or competed) female cross-country runners experienced 17.3 injuries. These included tendinitis of the knee, shin splints, and ankle sprains.
By contrast, male football players had 12.7 injuries per 1,000 athletic exposures--a difference of 36 percent.
Why the high rate among girls? Biology, for one, says Rice. Because heavy exercise is linked with missed menstrual cycles, many young female runners may have low levels of estrogen, a bone-protecting hormone that is normally released throughout the menstrual cycle.
Another factor is over-training. As cross-country becomes more popular, the competition gets fiercer. To keep up, some girls overtrain--without enough rest or a coach's supervision, says Rice. Runners should realize that like football, "cross-country is a contact sport," he adds. Contact with the ground can be just as damaging as body contact, if not more so.
But runners and other atheletics can avoid injury. Rice's advice: "Wear good shoes, run on soft surfaces, get plenty of rest, and eat right."
WHICH SPORT HURT MOST?
RANK SPORT SEASON INJURY RATE/1000
ATHLETIC EXPOSURES
1. Girls' cross-country fall 17.3
2. Football fall 12.7
3. Wrestling winter 11.8
4. Girls' soccer fall 11.6
5. Boys' cross-country fall 10.5
6. Girls gymnastics winter 10.0
7. Boys soccer spring 9.5
8. Girls' basketball winter 7.1
9. Girls' track spring 6.2
10. Boys basketball winter 5.5
11. Volleyball fall 5.4
12. Softball spring 4.8
13. Boys' track spring 4.4
14. Baseball spring 4.2
15. Fastpitch softball spring 2.4
16. Co-ed swimming winter 2.2
17. Co-ed tennis fall/spring 1.9
18. Co-ed golf fall/spring 0.8
Data contributed by 21 different high schools. (C) Stephen G.
Rice, M.D., 1993.
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