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HARLINGEN — There’s the rushing and the colliding and the crashing beneath the bright lights and the cheering crowds.
And sometimes, inevitably, the sharp pain of a torn ACL or a sprained ankle or a dislocated shoulder.
The school year is now upon us, and young athletes everywhere are gearing up for the fall football season.
“Monday will be our first official full day of practice,” said Benjamin Garcia, an athletic trainer at Harlingen High School South.
“Right now it’s a strength and conditioning that UIL allows us to do,” he said.
That strength and conditioning is exactly what young athletes must do to reduce the occurrence of injuries, said Heather Smith, nurse practitioner for Valley Baptist Orthopedics and Sports Medicine.
“The best way to prevent an on-season injury is to condition during off-season,” said Smith, one of the team doctors for the Harlingen, Lyford and Raymondville school districts.
“Don’t wait until football season begins and especially these middle schoolers that have two more weeks before school starts, now is the time to start exercising,” Smith said. “Go for the runs. Do those basic exercises that they’ve learned in PE since they were little. Get physically active now so that when they start their sports in seventh and eighth grade that they are already conditioned and not starting from scratch.”
Garcia and his fellow athletic trainer Marissa Martinez said they see a variety of injuries ranging from scrapes and cuts to concussions and dislocated shoulders and they’re ready. Both trainers work with male and female athletes in school sports throughout the year, including not only football but also basketball, volleyball, baseball, and track and field.
“You name it, we see it,” Martinez said.
There’s no set pattern of how many of what kind of sports injuries occur with school athletic programs, it just seems sort of random, Martinez and Garcia both said.
“There seems to be a trend of, one season it will be a lot of concussions, one season there will be … it just kind of varies by season and by sport and by gender and team,” Martinez said. “We see a lot of everything, we see a lot of kids, we see a lot of athletes, so I couldn’t give one injury that we get the most.”
One of the most-oft talked about injuries is of course a torn ACL. More specifically, it is a tear or sprain in the tissue that connects the thigh bone to the knee. It is caused by a sharp twisting motion and is characterized by an audible snap followed by sharp pain and swelling.
“There’s research that we can strengthen certain muscle groups and do our mobility,” Martinez said. “We have a great strengthening staff, we have a great coaching staff. They do their warmups, they do everything they need to in the weight room.”
Smith emphasized the importance of not overdoing their workouts or their playing.
“These coaches do a great job researching what’s best for strength and conditioning,” she said. “When the kids tend to workout outside of school or play on multiple sports at the same time or multiple teams at the same time, that tends to lead to overuse injuries.”
A better plan is to focus on one sport at a time and take 30 days of no competition. That gives the body time to heal and recharge and that can reduce sports injuries.
