Top 5 Most Dangerous Sports for Kids: Blog for EmergeOrtho—Blue Ridge Region
Youth sports offer several benefits to young athletes and watching young athletes compete in the games they love creates a lifetime of memories. As young athletes compete in their sports, they develop health benefits like staying physically fit and increased cardiovascular health, as well as developing life skills like discipline, teamwork, and work ethic. Though youth sports are great, millions of children are treated each year for sports-related injuries. Learning about the most dangerous sports will help parents and guardians decide what sports to put their children in or how to prevent injuries.
Each year, more than 3.5 million children ages 14 and younger get injured playing sports. Whether or not your child has been playing sports for years or is just beginning, you may wonder what sport has the most injuries. Though every sport has its risks, the following are the five sports with the most youth sports injuries for athletes aged 5 to 14.
Top 5 Most Dangerous Sports for Youth
Football
With quick changes of direction, jumping, head-on collisions, and more, tackle football ranks as the most dangerous sport for youth athletes. Some of the most common injuries in youth football are:
Knee sprains
Meniscus tears
Concussions
Ankle and wrist fractures
Muscle strains
Shoulder joint sprains.
Of all the athletic injuries in youth tackle football, one of the most common and serious is concussions. With traumatic head injuries, a concussion can have short-term effects that will go away with time. However, too many concussions may lead to long-term effects like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is brain degeneration caused by head trauma.
In an attempt to avoid serious injuries such as concussions, flag football has become popular among young athletes. Flag football allows the youth to learn the basic rules and fundamentals of football without contact. A study conducted by the CDC indicates that players in tackle football have 15 times more head impact than flag football.
Basketball
A sport that involves a lot of running, jumping, and passing, basketball is prone to athletic injuries. Of approximately 325,400 injuries, the most common are:
Ankle sprains (21.7% of injuries)
Finger sprains (8% of injuries)
Finger fractures (7.8% of injuries)
Knee sprains (3.9% of injuries)
Facial lacerations (3.9% of injuries.
Soccer
Youth soccer is the most popular youth sport, and its popularity continues to rise. Soccer is a great sport to learn speed and agility as well as coordination that an athlete can transfer to other sports that he or she may play. Given that soccer involves a lot of running and kicking, the most common injuries deal with the lower extremities. These injuries include:
Ankle sprain/strain (20.9% of injuries)
Knee sprain/strain (16.3% of injuries)
Contusion (22.5% of injuries)
Fractures
Concussion
Baseball/Softball
America’s pastime. Baseball and softball require a lot of patients and hand-eye coordination. Yet, repetitive motions, specifically in throwing, can lead to injuries over long periods. Though baseball and softball are not considered contact sports, they still have their share of injuries:
Sprains and strains
Fractures
Concussion
More so in baseball and softball than in other sports, overuse injuries are common. Overuse injuries occur when there is a repetitive motion that damages a specific area over time. Pitchers are susceptible to overuse injuries because of the constant repetition of overhead throwing.
Volleyball
Similar to basketball, volleyball involves a lot of jumping, which can contribute to knee and ankle injuries. Also, with motions such as serving, overuse injuries are common as well. Common volleyball injuries include:
Ankle sprain
Finger sprain
ACL injury
Collateral ligament injury
Jumper's knee
Low back pain
Thrower's shoulder
Injury Prevention
Though injuries are not necessarily inevitable, they can be preventable. Taking the proper precautions and monitoring your child can keep your young athlete ahead of the game. To
Get a preseason physical
Wear a well-fitting helmet that is properly sized (if playing tackle football)
Stay hydrated, especially in hot weather.
Maintains proper nutrition and appropriate periods of rest throughout the year.
Stretch
Communicates with the coach if something isn’t right
Play multiple sports (doing so trains and strengthens other parts of the body not used in a single sport)
Warm-up/cool down properly
Rest
If your athlete does happen to undergo athletic injuries, EmergeOrtho—Blue Ridge Region offers sports medicine care to ensure your child can get back to playing the sport he or she loves. If the injury results in the need for treatment, you can trust that EmergeOrtho’s board-certified specialist will treat youth sports injuries.Schedule your appointment to see one of our specialists.
