Sports Injuries in Girls

3 million girls now participate in high school sports. This is a 940% increase since the Title IX Equal Opportunity in Education Act was passed in 1972; how cool is that?

A recent study reveals some very interesting findings about injuries in our young female athletes.

The bottom line of the study is that girls have a higher risk of certain specific types of injuries than boys, but a lower overall injury rate than boys.

Specifically,

• The most popular high-school girls' sports are basketball, track, volleyball, softball and soccer.
• Overall, girls had half the injury rate of boys.
• In girls, injury rates were highest in soccer.
• The most common injuries were knee and ankle. These comprised 60% of all injuries in young female athletes (which is to say 99 injuries/100,000 athletes).
• This was a 30% higher rate of knee injury than in boys. ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) ruptures were seen to be three times more frequent in girl soccer and basketball players than in their boy counterparts. Girls also had higher rates of surgical repair than boys.

On the other hand,

• Traumatic brain injury involved only 11/100,000 girl athletes: a much lower rate than in boys.
• Basketball had the highest rate of concussion in girls, at a rate topped only by boy's football and boy's soccer. (Girl's track and girl's soccer were next highest.)

Interestingly, cheer-leading had the highest rate of catastrophic injury in girls. I guess I don't find this completely surprising as I do a lot of sports physicals for our local athletes.

Overall,

• There is no "injury epidemic" in girls' sports.
• The increased number of injuries seen corresponds to the greater number of girls competing.
• Other studies show that knee and ankle injury rates in girls improve with specific warm-up exercises and use of protective gear such as knee pads.

(Ed. If you are proud of your athletic potential-sports-scholarship daughter, niece, grand-daughter or neighbor, thank the federal government for Title IX.)