Injuries are something that most, if not all, athletes will experience at least once in their career. It is a soul crushing challenge that they have to work through to follow their dream. Some athletes decide to not tell their coaching staff in fear that they will miss and extinguish any opportunities that they might want to capitalize on. 

Movies like “Concussion” show how bad you can get messed up by doing what you love. Having played sports before, I relate to the feeling of being “beat up” after practice. However if you notice something that may be concerning the time missed should be an afterthought when it comes to your overall health.

A couple concussions can lead to CTE, broken bones that get infected can lead to amputation, and one misstep can change the range of motion in your knee forever. I believe that there needs to be more advocating for more advanced forms of recovery. We simply need a better way to prevent injuries that can change your body forever.  We should do a better job of educating our athletes on just how dangerous sports can be. “Even though you might not get a direct injury, the effects of regular wear and tear add up throughout the years. Excess strain on joints and muscles often lead to torn ligaments and stress fractures,” said  Douglas W. Stoddard MD, M Sp Med, Dip Sport Med, ES.  Of course you’re the one to sign the paper that says that you will be participating in a sport, but coaches and other players need to be more active in not letting injured players keep hurting themselves to the point of no return.

So instead of throwing students into the ringer with long hard practice schedules, why don’t we follow the research and change to a more efficient way to coach our players. Why are we out on the field, in the gym, or in the pool for upwards of three hours. When research shows there is a much better way to teach coach players to dominate the competition. “Adequate recovery has been shown to result in the restoration of physiological and psychological processes, so that the athlete can compete or train again at an appropriate level,” said Shona L. Halson. Of course we are still learning about how the best of the best train and how we are inferior in our knowledge about sports medicine in an ever evolving science, but there is no logical reason to justify clearance of an athlete that had a recent injury. I’m not a doctor but if more educated professionals say that training methods need to change, I’m all for it if it benefits our players.

With that information many students still won’t come forward with what injuries they have, especially seniors, in fear of their last season will get ruined. What we end up with is students that are complaining about pains only older adults should have. The constant soreness and back pain that plagues students on a class by class basis. Like I said, there are a lot of reasons to believe that players and coaches are willing to turn a blind eye in order to win.

We need to be better and take care of athletes that are in the earlier stages of their potential. Most of them are 14-18 years old, and they’re playing on injuries that can potentially hurt them even more. Let them recover, let them survive another season, and let them strive at the next level.