{"id":9439,"date":"2021-06-29T18:21:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T18:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/06\/29\/students-study-how-to-prevent-injuries-in-high-school-athletes\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:41:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:41:45","slug":"students-study-how-to-prevent-injuries-in-high-school-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/students-study-how-to-prevent-injuries-in-high-school-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Students study how to prevent injuries in high school athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

To read about more student research, click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The first step to preventing injuries in a given population, say among high school athletes, is to understand the injuries.<\/p>\n

A team of researchers at Furman University is starting to do just that, laying groundwork for injury prevention in high school football and volleyball players and cross-country runners at several schools in the Upstate of South Carolina.<\/p>\n

The research will help trainers evaluate the risk of injury by position for volleyball and football players, and by how many miles cross-country runners rack up, says Chris Hopkins<\/a>, assistant professor of health sciences at Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big picture is to create a surveillance program to measure how injuries change over time,\u201d Hopkins says. \u201cThrough injury surveillance we monitor what the problem is. If we find a higher risk in a certain population, we analyze the problem. The next step is to determine what\u2019s causing the risk and then develop preventions, then revisit.\u201d He says the study will hopefully expand to other sports and take place year-round.<\/p>\n

Hopkins and three Furman undergraduate students working as summer research fellows \u2013 Stephanie Behrens \u201922, Jocelyn Toner \u201922 and Beth Donnelly \u201924 \u2013 are working with PlaySafe, a non-profit organization in Anderson, South Carolina, that provides athletic trainers for schools that can\u2019t afford to have them on staff. The students are spending the summer creating questionnaires to better understand the athletes\u2019 physical condition and will send weekly questionnaires to the athletes throughout the fall, when each sport has its season.<\/p>\n

PlaySafe, with 23 full-time trainers at 31 schools in Georgia and South Carolina, gives the Furman researchers access to the athletes. For the initial project, Furman will be working with trainers at schools in Pickens, Anderson and Oconee counties.<\/p>\n

The primary goal is prevention. Donnelly, a Furman cross country team member from Nashville, remembers what it\u2019s like to be a high school athlete with an invincible attitude. \u201cI just had this mentality that I\u2019m not someone who gets injured,\u201d she says. She wound up overtraining and suffering a stress fracture. That\u2019s the kind of injury she hopes to help prevent among the high school students in the study.<\/p>\n

Jim Stoker, \u201989 M \u201999, interim executive director of PlaySafe, says South Carolina doesn\u2019t have a surveillance system in place. He hopes the research will help explain the need for having athletic trainers at sporting events, not only to care for injuries on the sidelines but to keep young athletes out of emergency rooms.<\/p>\n

Behrens worked with Donnelly in the spring to identify the research objectives, and all three students have worked to create survey questions that check on an athlete\u2019s health. They\u2019ve also created disclosure forms and made sure all regulatory details were worked out, and they\u2019ve been busy reviewing the literature on high school sports injuries.<\/p>\n

Toner has been interested in working with the community on preventing athletic injuries since she was in high school in Roswell, Georgia, where she was on the track team. Like Donnelly, she bought into the \u201cno pain, no gain\u201d adage until she did her own research. \u201cSports and being active is very important, but it\u2019s also important to make sure that you\u2019re doing it safely to avoid long-term injuries,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A secondary research objective is to study balance related to concussions in football players. In August, Hopkins, Behrens and Toner will take baseline measurements of athletes’ balance and retest those who suffer concussions during the season to note any lingering effects.<\/p>\n

Behrens, from Wyckoff, New Jersey, says the opportunity to do research as an undergrad will help her chances of getting into medical school. Toner, from Roswell, Georgia, plans to go to graduate school in kinesiology. She says the experience will help her decide if research is something she wants to pursue.<\/p>\n

The research is funded by Furman\u2019s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health<\/a> and the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute<\/a> at Clemson University. Summer research fellows receive stipends that cover room and board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To read about more student research, click here. The first step to preventing injuries in a given population, say among high school athletes, is to understand the injuries. A team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":9440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21,59,94,7,1],"tags":[207],"class_list":["post-9439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-health-sciences","category-pre-health","category-public-health","category-top-four-news-2nd-story","category-uncategorized","tag-student-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}