Keeping kids in the game

Jacqueline Stenson MSNBC contributor

In a nation obsessed with professional sports, it's not surprising that many parents and coaches are hoping to nurture the next superstar. After all, kids who excel in their game can get college scholarships and maybe even fame and fortune in the big leagues.

But in a new public service campaign, sports medicine experts caution that those dreams can be seriously derailed early on by injuries that can plague a young athlete for a lifetime.

The campaign features ads showing a team of young baseball players celebrating a victory. The headline asks, "What will they have longer, their trophies or their injuries?"

At a time when increasing numbers of kids are participating in organized sports — and often the same sport year-round — it's an important question to consider, says Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, chairman of orthopedic surgery at the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). AAOS has teamed up with the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) for the new campaign.

"There's much more of an emphasis in having kids focus on one sport," Zuckerman says.

Serious sports
In generations past, kids played pick-up games of basketball or softball in their neighborhoods, he notes. And organized sports were more seasonal, with the kids playing football in the fall, for instance, and soccer in the summer.

Today, however, many young athletes focus on one sport and they play it year-round through competitive sports leagues and traveling teams. Some kids even have personal coaches.

The problem is that young bodies need to be challenged in different ways, Zuckerman says. Subjected to the same movements repeatedly, the body becomes susceptible to overuse injuries such as stress fractures or tendonitis of the elbows and shoulder joints. And because their bodies are still growing, kids can suffer damage to their growth plates — the areas of cartilage around joints where bone growth occurs.

In some kids, the injuries can cause years of trouble, ruining the chances of an athletic career, Zuckerman says.

More than 3.5 million sports-related injuries were treated in kids under age 15 in 2003, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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