By Neil Gregory,
Staff Writer.
Preventing and mitigating injuries among student athletes remains one of the most persistent challenges facing school sport teams to this day. It’s important for athletes to adopt sustainable methods to prevent, recognize and recover from injuries.
Effective solutions are simple ones that athletes don’t have to change their daily life to implement, like ensuring protective gear fits well or modifying drills during practice to minimize the risk of re-injury.
Taking preventive measures before practice or play will reduce the injury risk of any sport. Athletes should think about a certain action or play that could achieve the same goal without the risk of injury. “I think the biggest lesson I learned… was probably trying to avoid doing whatever I did to get injured in the first place,” said senior Yoshi Jones, a lineman on the varsity football team. Listening to your body is the single most important thing you can do in order to keep yourself safe and healthy.
When asked about what specifically caused him to step out of the game, Jones said, “In the moment it happened I just felt pure pain,” later realizing that this sharp pain was due to a dislocated shoulder. It’s easy to brush off pain, but not being honest with yourself about an injury will only lead to more time off.
Completely avoiding injury is impossible, so what can you do if prevention doesn’t work?
Simply follow the general advice of PRICE: Protect, Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate. These principles, adapted to the particular injury, are essential if one hopes for a speedy recovery.
If your doctor specifically gives orders not to use an injured part of the body then listen — they are the experts, after all. Take time to rest and recover as that’s the fastest way to getting back out and participating in your sport.
