String Of Injuries
A nationally ranked diver, Bates Gregory injured her knee so severely when she was ten that she had to stop competing in gymnastics and switch to diving in the hopes that the sport would place less stress on the knee. During her first three years of high school, Gregory won consecutive state titles in diving and set the state record for the highest point total.
Gregory sustained a serious ankle injury and was sidelined for six months. A week before the state championships four months later, she fell off the board during practice, severely re-injuring the same ankle. Not wanting her competition to know she was injured, she told no one except her coach. Competing in excruciating pain, Gregory squeaked out a fourth consecutive title.
Speaking of the injury, Gregory flashed a modest grin and said, I just had to tape the ankle. It was all right." But it wasn't. Two weeks after the meet, Gregory underwent surgery that put her on the shelf for another six months.
Growth and Constant Training: A Recipe For Injury
The surgery came one year after surgery to her left knee and two years after surgery to her right knee. Gregory attributed the knee surgeries to a "combination of growing really fast and overuse, " admitting that she practiced upwards of six hours a day, 365 days a year.
Young athletes like Gregory are severely injuring their growing bones, joints, growth plates and muscles at an alarming rate. One of six high school athletes is at least temporarily out of action each year due to injury. At the younger ages, the figure is nearly one of ten.
Most of the injuries were the result of over training, long playing seasons, and attending specialty sports camps. The injuries are caused by repeated stress to body tissue, joints and bones, such as constant over arm throwing in baseball.
Nothing New
Overuse injuries have become commonplace among young athletes in the last decade (although "Little League elbow" has been a problem for decades). They are not the kind suffered by children and adolescents engaging in free play or "pick up" games, but are clearly a product of the organized youth sports boom. The damage to hard and soft tissues resulting from undetected, unreported and often untreated overuse injuries can be permanent and lead to problems later in life, such as arthritis.
Injuries to growth plates, tendons, ligaments or bones are also very painful. The "no pain, no gain philosophy so frequently heard in athletic circles is an example of an adult concept which, when applied to children and adolescents, can be extremely detrimental.
Young athletes with overuse injuries typically play on competitive teams or compete in an individual sport at a competitive level, have done so since an early age, and, more often than not, play that sport continually, twelve months a year. Using soccer as an example, such a player will play outdoors until late Fall, then move indoors to play three consecutive eight week sessions until it is time to move back outside for the Spring travel soccer season in March. When that season ends in late June, it's on to an Olympic Development, Select or Premier team for a round of summer tournaments, with perhaps a one or two week soccer camp thrown in to the mix, and, by August, its time to gear up for a Labor Day tournament and another fall season. Whew!
Returning Too Soon
Overuse injuries now account for a majority of sports injuries seen in children," reports Dr. Sally Harris, Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Section On Sports Medicine and Fitness. Fearing they will be left behind, players rush to return to action after suffering an injury before it has fully healed. Research shows that young athletes are increasingly suffering a string of injuries which often begin at age nine or ten when they are pushing their developing bodies to the limit.
Nowhere has the epidemic of overuse injuries been as severe as in girls gymnastics. In her book Little Girls In Pretty Boxes: The Making And Breaking Of Elite Gymnasts And Figure Skaters, author Joan Ryan blames coaches and parents. "Coaches push because they are paid to produce great gymnasts. They are relentless about weight because physically round gymnasts and skaters don't win. Coaches are intolerant of injuries because in the race against puberty, time off is death. Their job is not to turn out happy, well-adjusted young women; it is to turn out champions. If they scream, belittle or ignore, if they prod an injured girl to forget her pain, if they push her to her to drop out of school, they are only doing what the parents have paid them to do."
Blaming The Coaches
"Much of the blame for the young athlete's problems falls on the coaches and parents. Obviously, no parent wakes up in the morning and plots how to ruin his or her child's life. But the money, the fame and the promise of great achievement can turn a parent's head. Ambition gets perverted. The boundaries of parents and coaches bloat and mutate, with the parent becoming the ruthless coach and the coach becoming the controlling parent, says Ryan.
How many fathers are there who install pitching mounds and home plates in their back yards? Youth baseball rules clearly state that a pitcher may only pitch a specified number of innings per week. Yet some of those same pitchers go home and pitch the equivalent of ten times the limit, putting their arms and shoulders at risk of injury.
Professionals agree that up to half of all injuries our children sustain in youth sports are preventable. If we, as parents, pay attention to training methods, safe equipment and playing surfaces, and to the psychological health of our children, injuries will decrease. It's up to you to become involved in youth sports in a positive way and to make sure that coaches, clubs and leagues put safety first.