ACL epidemic in girls/women’s soccer

[Anonymous]

Anyone reading these articles and shocked at the percentage of top women players struggling with this injury? I have a young soccer-mad girl who hopefully wouldn’t sustain an injury like this for several years but I’m freaked out—articles describe it as almost inevitable for serious college players. I already wished she was interested in tennis or swimming instead because of the concussions but didn’t know about this…

Are any parents focusing on specific strengthening to prevent this before girls get to a competitive level?

https://www.wsj.com/sports/soccer/acl-injuries-womens-world-cup-3d1873c0

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/health/women-acl-injury-prevention-world-cup/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/sports/soccer/womens-world-cup-soccer-torn-acl.html

[Anonymous]

DD is in high school now. Parents were joking about when they would miss a season for ACLs when they started started travel 7 years ago. This is nothing new and it's not just soccer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone reading these articles and shocked at the percentage of top women players struggling with this injury? I have a young soccer-mad girl who hopefully wouldn’t sustain an injury like this for several years but I’m freaked out—articles describe it as almost inevitable for serious college players. I already wished she was interested in tennis or swimming instead because of the concussions but didn’t know about this…

Are any parents focusing on specific strengthening to prevent this before girls get to a competitive level?

https://www.wsj.com/sports/soccer/acl-injuries-womens-world-cup-3d1873c0

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/health/women-acl-injury-prevention-world-cup/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/sports/soccer/womens-world-cup-soccer-torn-acl.html

So these are the top players. No one keeps track or really cares about the other players. If you are out a year or more in travel you are pretty much done. It takes about a full year if you are a pro player with all the support of the staff and trainers. If you are a travel player it can take a year and 1/2 to be fully fit.

[Anonymous]

Look into Nordic exercises and ACL.
Also, really monitor both training and playing minutes.
Force rest if needed.
Never play through an injury.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So these are the top players. No one keeps track or really cares about the other players. If you are out a year or more in travel you are pretty much done. It takes about a full year if you are a pro player with all the support of the staff and trainers. If you are a travel player it can take a year and 1/2 to be fully fit.

Not true at all. Recovery time is highly dependent on the quality of your physical therapy, and on the athlete's commitment to returning to play. Youth players can return just as fast as pro's if they put in the work and are guided properly.

[Anonymous]

much more information on torn ACL's and preventative measures here: https://socalsoccer.com/threads/torn-acl.20166/

[Anonymous]

This has been studied since the 1990s.
https://sports.yahoo.com/acl-injuries-womens-soccer-world-cup-050034831.html

[Anonymous]

My kid tore her ACL with about 5 games left in her HS and travel career. Fortunately she didn't want to play college ball, but it is a long road to recovery. There are exercise you can do to make it less likely but it is not possible to reduce risk to 0%.

[Anonymous]

This is the problem with youth sports now. Parents want their kids to play at an elite level without the training provided elite (I.e. pro) athletes. The same is happening with pitchers in baseball.

[Anonymous]

What specially is happening to the pitchers?

Also, for a regular person is ACL recovery generally complete?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you, everyone. We are not a sporty family and DD is still in a pre travel league (but aging out) so I haven’t heard this discussed at all. Go to know.

I’m having trouble understanding how common this is on a local travel level. How can I put the risk into perspective? Are most parents as concerned with this as with concussion? I may be totally wrong but for some reason I feel like with a single concussion I might have time to react and pull her, while with ACL once it happens it’s done. Am I misunderstanding?

Appreciate the responses so far.

[Anonymous]

DD was 13 and tore her ACL last spring…

Hindsight is 20/20 of course and wished we would have listened to people we know in Sports medicine. You can identify if your DD is at risk by how she stands and runs. If her knee favors the inside, it means her inside quad is much stronger than the outside. Ideally the player should have at least equal strength in her inside or outside quad, if not stronger on the outside. We took this for granted as their isn’t much data to support the theory but sure enough, the tear happened when cutting to the inside.

Fortunately we have a great team working with her and she is recovering quicker than expected.

The girls side of Clubs really needs to take a step back and begin developing a program to prevent these injuries. I don’t see how spending 10-15 minutes 2x a week is an issue. Development is also knowing how to prevent injury.

[Anonymous]

Is there something like an injury prevention task force at local girls clubs? Like as part of a pta or whatever groups are formed by soccer parents?

[Anonymous]

What would this task force do exactly? This is a known problem with no great solutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What would this task force do exactly? This is a known problem with no great solutions.

Taskforce? Taking a risk every time you lace up, stop trying to legislate everything. Helicopter parenting to the max with this thread