Jul 31, 2009 — See MSNBC.com
An estimated 30 million American youth participate in organized sports each year. Playing a sport can bring many benefits to their physical and emotional health. But sports injuries in school kids are common, accounting for about one in five visits to the emergency room for injuries among those ages 5 to 17, according to new federal statistics. Thousands more each year suffer “overuse” injuries such as tendonitis and stress fractures, experts say. “You’re going to have injuries in all sports,” says Frederick Mueller, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the university’s National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. “They’re gonna happen. But the important thing is the preventive steps to reduce these injuries.”
