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ACL tears sideline female athletes
By Marta Lawrence
The NCAA News
Alexia
Mickles lunged the wrong way, heard a loud crack and her softball
season was over. Mickles, a soccer and softball student-athlete at
Penfield High School near Rochester, New York, went to the ground
holding her knee.
She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL.
Although
the research varies, female athletes are two and a half to four times
more likely to tear their ACLs than men, depending on the sport.
Understanding the reasons behind these disproportionate numbers is “the
million dollar question,” says Dr. Michael Maloney, director of the
sports medicine division at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Through
a local grant, Maloney is leading an effort to train area female high
school athletes, including Mickles, about how to protect their knees
from injury.
Athletes who enter
the program are provided with a screening to determine how they jump,
land, run, cut and pivot. Once the athlete’s at-risk positions have
been identified, she is given a series of exercises and conditioning
drills designed to retrain her muscles’ response to those activities.
In
its first year, the injury prevention program reached almost 1,300
soccer, basketball and volleyball student-athletes in 26 high schools
in the Rochester area. During that time, Maloney says there were five
non-contact ACL tears, which he says was “a pretty low number.” Maloney
typically would expect to see one and a half to two ACL tears per 100
female athletes participating in those sports.
The
program wasn’t implemented in time to prevent Mickles’ original injury,
but she says she’s happy she has the opportunity to participate now. “I
really think it would help if every team were able to do it because I
think there would be even less injuries,” she says.
For more information including graphic displays, rehab directions, and current research, please visit the following link or visit the NCAA website: http://media.ncaa.org/Skins/ACLSkin/Default.aspx?PageId=6c28f11c-85a7-4a22-911d-41e934e98e6b&ss=MediaPortal
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