This was another very early post of this blog back in 2010, September to be exact. As you can tell I was very green to the whole linking of articles and writing. However, this is an important article regarding concussion statistics by sport from five years ago. I would be interesting to do a follow-up to this with what we know now. Looking back at my observations have not changed much in the five years, I may move wrestling above cheerleading but that is about all.
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Concussions are not exclusive to American football, although it is the most covered sport as it relates to concussions. This is a good time to note that in the United States the next most concussive sport, is soccer, the number one sport in the world.
A reasearch project by University of North Carolina reported concussion rates by 100,000 athlete-exposures and separated it into sports here is what the list showed;
- Football
- Boys Soccer
- Girls Basketball
- Girls Track
- Girls Soccer
- Baseball
- Softball
- Boys Track
- Boys Basketball
- Wrestling
- Cheerleading
Although I would never disagree with subjective stats and a solid research project, empirically this is not the trend we see at the high school level.
Purely on experience and ad hoc observations it would be more like this;
- Football
- Girls Soccer
- Boys Soccer
- Girls Basketball
- Cheerleading/Gymnastics
- Wrestling
- Boys Basketball
- Baseball
- Softball
- Boys Track
- Girls Track
The moral of the post would be no matter what sport you are associated with concussions are a real danger. But don’t limit your expectations to just sport. When kids are fooling around in the backyard and “bump” their head you may need to remember all this information.
I would hope you write a piece about the differences between sports where concussion is direct result of playing a sport as intended and those where concussion is the result of incidental contact.
Long-term negative outcomes are associated with sports with repetitive and untreated head trauma. Almost everyone can handle a single concussive event when offered proper care. On the other hand, at a certain threshold not matter how much care or its quality is offered repetitive brain trauma has horrific consequences.