Why I became a PT and there’s a study to support it
At 10 years old I decided to join my first athletic team. I entered the world of the young female athlete playing basketball for my middle school team. I was shy but it pulled me out of my shell and gave me confidence and a level of independence I have never had before. Unfortunately for me, when I hit high school my height made it much more challenging for me to continue at a high school level. Fortunately however, the world opened up for girls with sports in high school and I began participating in field hockey where size didn’t matter. This began my road to becoming a Physical Therapist.
I was always on the field and was resistant to miss a minute of any game or practice. In the off-season I ran winter and spring track. I thought I might as well run track since I was quick and it would keep me in shape for my favorite fall sport. Little did I know at the time that certain sports might have a higher incidence of overuse injuries. I figured that it was good to participate in more than one sport to keep me in better shape. I was always injured though. In high school I lived in the athletic trainer’s office after school and before practice. If I wasn’t rehabbing a sprained ankle, I was rehabbing knee tendinitis or some other lower body injury. I was destined to become a Physical Therapist as I learned in high school the value and need for rehabilitation of sports injury. If I knew then what I know now with my education, clinical experience maybe I could have focused more time and effort on prevention than rehabilitation of injury.
A recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics explains why I might have been that athlete in the trainer’s office all year. Data for this study was submitted by school athletic trainers through the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance System, which randomly selected 100 high schools from an even distribution of geographic regions and school sizes. They found that in between 2006 and 2012, girls’ track and field and field hockey have come to top the list of high school sports linked to higher rates of overuse injuries in a set of 20 boys’ and girls’ sports. While the all-sports average injury rate was 1.50 per 10,000 athletic “exposures,” girls’ track and field registered a 3.82 rate, while girls’ field hockey reported a 2.93 rate. The highest overuse injury among boys’ sports was in track and field, at 2.24 injuries per 10,000 exposures.
So, I might have picked sports with a higher probability of overuse injuries but I loved every minute of it and would do it all again even if it meant the hours of rehabbing. But today it doesn’t have to be that way. Knowing this and understanding the physical changes in young women and the demands of their chosen sport, girls can seek out experts in musculoskeletal rehabilitation who can assist them in developing the strength, flexibility, agility and coordination to prevent injury and time away from their sport.
My unwillingness to sit on the sideline while my teammates were on the field led me to work harder to get back to my sport. My hope is that young female athletes today can avoid the sidelines due to injury through the help of experts trained in women’s musculoskeletal health and fitness.