Injury Epidemic: UConn and Elsewhere

[oldude]

Since misery loves company, here’s a story of woe to consider. A couple days ago Lewis and Clark CC WBB in Portland, OR was forced to cancel their season due to a rash of injuries. The team started the season with 11 healthy players…..Sound familiar? Injuries & illnesses rapidly cut their roster down to 6-7 healthy players.

LCCC continued to play all their games through the holiday break, hoping to add back players after the holidays. In fact, the situation got worse, forcing the school to shut down the WBB season for good.

 

[Kat]

One thing that should be done, starting today, is to have the referees call a hard foul every time a player hits their opponent in the head/face with an elbow, arm, or hand. That's if it is deemed unintentional. If it is deemed intentional, eject the player. I've really noticed an increase in players (not just the Huskies) getting smacked in the head. It's a contact sport, and players will bump and knock each other around but there should be enforced penalties for players who come up swinging their elbows with impunity. These are skilled athletes who can control themselves better if they have incentives to do so.

 

[Fore!]

I feel like a lot of it is sexism in sports medicine and so many recovery and prevention and even fixes being designed around men and male athletes first. I know its getting better and progress has been made but really I don't see how there hasn't been more done to figure out how to protect female athletes bodies, especially their knees, better.

Aside from genetic reengineering of their skeletal structure, not sure much, if anything, can be done to prevent knee injuries. Single sport overload from an early age is thought to be a contributing factor.

 

[Skeets]

Pardon the "Old Timer's Story" but playing for UConn's football team in '74 had a preseason scrimmage at The Mansfield Training School(I believe that what it was called then), an over anxious freshman, pulled me down by the back of the jersey after I had relaxed as I was nearly out of bounds, whacked my head first on the ground, barely remember, had that "stare" sitting in front of the locker, with my pads on after everyone else had pretty much was out of their gear, finally, someone, helped me with my pads off. I was concussed "obviously", not knocking the training staff, but back then don't really remember much of any protocol.
I'm sure that's the way it was across the board in college athletics.

Hmmm, I played high school football a couple of years earlier than that and concussions were diagnosed and protocols executed. Certainly not as sophisticated as today, but they did exist. This could be the difference between high school "kids" and college "men".