The Goal Is Not to Get Injured Playing Lacrosse—But a New Study Shows Injury Rates Vary by Age :

Lacrosse is growing in popularity, with teams playing this sport as youth (pre-high school), as well as in high school (HS) and college. How frequently and what types of injuries are attributed to playing lacrosse? Kerr et al. (10.1542/peds.2018-3482) opted to run down the field with these questions and publish what they learned in a new study being released in our journal this month.  The authors looked at multiple injury surveillance systems kept largely by athletic trainers in 21 youth boys’, 22 high school boys’, and 20 NCAA men’s lacrosse teams during two seasons of play. The findings are interesting that while the highest overall injury rate was in youth compared to HS and college, when it came to serious time loss due to injury, the rates were lowest in youth.  But before you celebrate that lacrosse is relatively safe for youth to play when it comes to serious injury, be aware that this study also demonstrates that the concussion rate was higher in youth than in HS or in the NCAA teams.  To learn just what types of injuries occur and at what ages, you’ll need to lacrosse over from this blog to the article itself to learn more.  Looking at the injury data by age grouping in this study will probably result in a few new prevention strategies that will stick with you and, in turn, your local lacrosse team no matter how old the players are on that team.