More than seven million injuries every year in the U.S. are sports-and recreation-related and more than half of those 7 million injuries involved people age 5 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among 12-17-year-olds, sports-related injuries are the leading cause of emergency room visits. At the Center for Sports Medicine at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, staff not only wants to help young athletes heal after injury, but to educate athletes, parents and coaches on how to avoid injuries in the first place.
Ashley Scherer is a dancer. The 16-year-old junior has attended Cab Calloway School of the Arts for six years. For the past two summers, she has left home to study her art with professional dance companies out-of-state; when she’s home she can be found at DanceDelaware, taking and teaching classes.
Tendinitis is not uncommon for a dancer, but doctors discovered Scherer had an extra bone in her foot, between the ankle and heel. This bone, particularly when Scherer was dancing en pointe, aggravated the tendinitis and would not allow her to fully recover. Doctors told her the extra bone could be removed.
“I wanted to get it taken out because I wanted to dance again, but I wasn’t ready for the recovery,” Scherer said.
She’s now seven weeks out of surgery and goes to the Center for Sports Medicine twice a week after school. It’s slow going and often she wants to go full steam, but her therapist reins her in.
“It’s very nice, I love coming here,” she said of the center, the region’s largest pediatric sports medicine facility. “There are things I do here that I don’t do in dance to build back my strength.”
Ashley’s mother, Pat, said she appreciates the effort of the staff at the center, both in encouraging her daughter to take her time in recovery and in keeping Pat informed of Ashley’s progress.
“They really work with the athletes, instead of just regular physical therapy,” Pat Scherer said. “And they help (the athletes) with how to prevent another injury.”
Since opening about a year ago, the Center for Sports Medicine has also launched a quarterly series on injury prevention. The first event focused on the female athlete. The next, coming up on Jan. 24, will focus on “overhead and throwing athletes.” Whether throwing a ball or swimming freestyle, repetitive overhead motion can endanger rotator cuffs or other muscle groups.
Erin McLaughlin, a physical therapist/athletic trainer at the center, said the session on the female athlete in November provoked a lot of questions from parents and coaches. As a result, they are planning to leave more time for questions and a roundtable discussion this time around.
Dr. Kathleen B. O’Brien spearheaded the creation of the Center for Sports Medicine after spending a great deal of time treating orthopedic injuries at the hospital.
“With or without us, the “Sports Nation” was really taking over,” O’Brien said. “We’ll always be treating injuries, we’ll always have a strong foundation in rehab, but what we’re really trying to have here is a sea change. More than half of the injuries I see can be prevented if you just have the right knowledge and the right technique and the right people working with you.”
O’Brien said there is a “passion” for sports in Delaware that makes it an exciting place to play sports, but everyone involved—from the young athlete to the parent to the coach—should focus on the big picture.
“I love sports, I played sports my whole life. There’s so much to learn from (sports) and so much to be gained from it, but we’ve definitely gone overboard,” O’Brien said.
The Center for Sports Medicine at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.
Staff and athletes address the issue of injury prevention
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Citing Cal Ripken Jr.’s book, Parenting Young Athletes the Ripken Way: Ensuring the Best Experience for Your Kids in Any Sport, O’Brien said it would be healthy for all young athletes if expectations were dialed down.
“I think it’s too much, too organized, too soon,” she said. “There’s no reason to be sports-specific before high school, certainly not position-specific before high school.”
Playing different sports challenges different muscle groups and allows a person to develop different skills. “If you just play soccer all the time, you’re running the same way, you’re using the mechanics the same way and you’re not challenging your body. If you play different sports, you’re helping your body develop and helping your skills develop and I think that is the way to go,” O’Brien said.
To that end, the Center for Sports Medicine works on the basics, including strength and flexibility that can help any type of athlete.
“Flexibility is always important when you’re talking to young athletes,” McLaughlin said. “(Young people) will lose some flexibility when they go through growth spurts and we want to make sure they are using proper technique from square one; otherwise they can injure themselves when they are training to try out for that JV team.”
O’Brien said the benefits are well worth the extra time put into training.
“As a doctor in orthopedics,” O’Brien said, “I would love it if I didn’t have to see (hurt athletes)—if we could get them before they get hurt. Our main focus is always injury prevention, but oh, by the way, you’re going to get stronger and you’re going to get faster.”
The free workshop “The Overhead and Throwing Athlete” begins with registration at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 24. For more information, visit their website.