There’s a growing awareness of how damaging athletic injuries can be, thanks – in part – to 75 players who filed suit against the NFL this summer, but coaches and parents may still be clueless when it comes to female athletes. Experts here in Virginia say girls sometimes play harder than the guys and suffer injuries that can plague them for a lifetime.
Thanks to publicity in the professional world, more young athletes, coaches and parents recognize the risks faced by boys who play high school sports, but experts on female athletes say they can also suffer crippling injuries:
“More than 50% of them actually are overuse injuries from basically over training – training year round, training like 7 days per week and not giving the body and the mind a chance to recover,” says Dr. Joel Brenner, medical director of sports and adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk.
He says girls who play basketball or soccer have more concussions than boys — a fact that doesn’t surprise Shawna Lynch-Chi – a neuropsychology fellow at the University of Virginia.
“Girls, when compared to the same type of sports that boys play, actually have a higher incidence of concussion rates than boys do. Girls and boys are just built completely differently.”
Symptoms of a concussion may occur the next day, and they can be subtle: Headache, amnesia, dizziness, ringing in the ears, nausea, slurred speech and fatigue. If athletes don’t recognize those symptoms, they’re at even greater risk for future injury.
Brenner adds that parents are sometimes to blame – pushing girls to play, hoping they’ll get college scholarships for sports. In fact, fewer than 5% of young athletes do. He says coaches and parents must be firm and insist that injured girls not compete.
Michael Sokolov agrees. The author of a book called Warrior Girls says parents must be advocates for their children — teaming up to argue with coaches when necessary.
“If you are one parent, and your young daughter plays for one of these go-go basketball, lacrosse, soccer teams, whatever, you’re one parent and you say, hey, I think we’re playing too much – we’re playing tournaments that are five games in four days or playing two seasons instead of one, all these things that are wearing our kids out – all these things that are wearing out kids out, if you’re just one person and you say that, you’re a trouble maker,” says Sokolov.
— Sandy Hausman
Virginia Public Radio 