Assignment 16/Speech- Rhyan Lee

Let’s Get Serious: The Importance of Sports Injuries

Tennis elbow, hamstring strain, shin splints, groin pull, concussion, and ACL tear. These are the most common sports injuries. And with over 30 million American children participating in some form of organized sport, the previously listed injuries, along with many others, happen to around 3.5 million children annually with 775,000 of those children requiring serious hospital care for their injuries.

When a child gets injured while playing a sport it’s expected that they get some time off from the sport to fully heal before continuing. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen. In sports, many kids are told to “play through the pain” and to essentially ignore injuries. It would seem that playing through the pain would apply to more minor injuries, but the injuries that are ignored the most are serious and are known to be “invisible injuries” or “negligible injuries”. An example of an invisible injury would be a concussion. This is an injury commonly ignored because it’s easier to tell an athlete to “play through the pain” when the pain is not visible. You can’t see the outward impact, but on the inside concussions cause its sufferer much pain. Yet that internal pain is set on the back burner for a practice. Then there are negligible injuries that would seem minimal, but cause much more damage than expected. This applies to sprains. They sound less harmful compared to a fracture, but in the case of ankle damage, sprains can be more detrimental than a break.

Two years ago. Freshman year and I severely sprained my ankle. I’m a competitive cheerleader and I was mid dance before I took a misstep and rolled my ankle. I couldn’t walk. I had an ankle so swollen I couldn’t put on a shoe. I was on crutches for a week and hobbled around with a brace on for another two. I remember going to the sports doctor and she told me that I had a class b ankle sprain. She recommended that I be out of my activity for three months. But according to the head of my program, I was “too valuable” and the team couldn’t afford to have me out for three months. So, after watching the doctor negotiate with my mom and coach via text, my three month break was shortened to two weeks because my presence as an athlete was apparently more important than my health as an injured person. This concept of putting the game before the player is seen across multiple sports and activities and has even carried on into the minds of athletes themselves.

“Why can’t you practice?” “You look fine.” “Are you able to be in the next competition?” “Can’t you just push through it?” No and yes. I shouldn’t, but I’m forced to. The pressure from peers after being injured is intense. At school if someone was injured people would ask: “Are you okay?” “What happened?” “I’m glad it isn’t worse.” But in sports, questions center around the playing abilities of the athlete rather than the athlete’s health. Asking “so when can you start playing again?” “Is there anyway you can come back early?” “Does it hurt so bad you can’t practice?” It accentuates the idea in athletes that their injuries don’t matter as much as the team, but they matter even more. Athletes even compare themselves to each other to reinforce the idea of playing through the pain. A girl told me that at a competition she broke her foot in the midst of the routine and was able to continue and used it for justification as to why I should practice with an ankle I could barely put weight on. Due to the pressure and comparison from peers, injured athletes force themselves to play through the pain to please them.

Playing through the pain not only keeps athletes from properly healing, but it leaves them susceptible to getting the same injury again. Would you rather have an athlete be out for a few months and have them healthy enough to play a long career or have an athlete out for a week and have them continuously hurt themselves and not be able to reach their full potential? Well unfortunately, in this competitive circuit where winning state is more important than an athlete’s future physical state the former is chosen over the latter.

Young athletes are getting injured and reinjured at an unprecedented rate, that’s why we need to place more importance on athlete injuries. We need to get rid of the “game before the player” mindset. Taking care of injuries now can spare athletes the intense pain from those injuries in the future and keep them from re-injuring themselves. By educating people about common injuries, how much rest is needed, and how essential treatments are, then maybe we can lower the number of injuries faced by young athletes annually. Because preventing the appearance of cognitive issues due to brain trauma is more important than playing through the pain of a concussion in order to compete at nationals.

We need a change and this change for more awareness begins with the coaches. Coaches love to talk about how valued their players are, but if they really valued them, they would let them heal and respect their injuries. Coaches need to change their mindsets and learn to put health before the game. Parents also need to get onboard with this mindset change. Many parents tell their kids to “play through the pain” and they value their child’s sports career more than their health under the impression that their kid is going to go pro. I assure you that treating that muscle tear will help your child go pro more effectively than forcing them to “play through the pain”. Ironically in the haste to make sure their kids have a good chance at a sports career, parents are instead hindering their children’s chances by forcing them to play despite being injured.

So, the message? If you really cared about an athlete, you would treat their injuries more seriously. Changing the minds of coaches, parents, and athletes themselves can help achieve this feat because young athletes deserve to live in a world where they can feel that people care more about them than their playing ability and that they can live without suffering the repercussions of not having a properly healed injury.

To further extend my point, currently I have slight limit of mobility in my left ankle and some angles can still cause me to be uncomfortable. So yeah, that banner and that trophy from the competition I pushed through don’t measure up to the difficulty I experience now. And it frustrates me knowing that it could’ve been avoided through proper resting time. That’s why we need to work to prevent others from having the same fate because these young athletes deserve better. Thank you.

Bibliography

Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis. Directed by Steve James, performance by Christopher Nowinski, Alan Schwarz, and Harry Carson, 2014.

John Hopkins Medicine. “Sports Injury Statistics.” Is There Really Any Benefit to Multivitamins?, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/pediatrics/sports_injury_statistics_90,p02787.

Nmortho. “Top 10 Most Common Sports Injuries.” New Mexico Orthopaedic Associates, P.C, Nmortho Https://Www.nmortho.com/Wp-Content/Uploads/2015/03/New-Mexico-Orthopaedics-Web-Logo-vs7.Png, 27 Oct. 2016, www.nmortho.com/top-10-common-sports-injuries/.

Orange County Orthopedic Center. “Most Common Sports Injuries.” Orange County Orthopedic and Pain Center, orangecountyorthopediccenter.com/conditions/sports-injuries/.