Background: High school-sponsored athletic programs currently provide more than 7.7 million students in the United States with health and societal benefits, but they also inherently increase the risk of students sustaining a sports injury. Understanding risk factors that predict injuries in sports is an essential first step to addressing the problem in this population. Purpose: To determine the role of offensive versus defensive actions in noncontact lower extremity injury rates in high school basketball and soccer in both boys and girls sports. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Methods: Noncontact lower extremity injury data were collected from academic years 2005-2006 through 2011-2012 for boys and girls basketball and soccer through the surveillance tool High School RIO (reporting information online). The injuries in this subset of the database occurred over a total of 6.4 million athlete-exposures. Results: Significant differences in overall lower extremity injury rates were found when comparing ball-handling and defending actions in basketball (rate ratio [RR], 1.36; 95% CI, 1.08-1.73; P = .009), but no appreciable difference was observed in soccer (RR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.70-1.12; P = .31). Female participants had higher injury rates than did males for both ball-handling and defending actions for both sports (P<.05). Only girls soccer showed significant differences in the odds ratio (OR) of defending to ball-handling injury rates between competition and practice (OR, 1.88; 95% CI, 1.01-3.48; P = .047). Conclusion: The injury rate differences observed in this study between offensive and defensive actions suggest that investigating potential differences between sport-specific tasks may provide a more complete understanding of injury mechanisms.
- Injury prevention
- Pediatric sports medicine
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Orthopedics and Sports Medicine
- Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation