Injuries In Youth Football: A Descriptive Two Year Study of Local South Carolina Football Leagues

Objective: To collect and analyze injury data from two leagues in the Midlands area of South Carolina. One of the leagues is an age-weight league, meaning athletes have to be within a certain age range and weight range to play on a specific team. The other league was an age-only league, meaning athletes have to be within a certain range to play on a specific team. Results: For the two seasons that injury data was collected, the age-weight league had 208 injuries and the age-only league had 109. For both leagues, the majority of the injuries sustained were contusions. Each league had at least two instances when emergency transportation was needed because of the severity of the injury. Fifty-nine athletes injured in the age-only league returned to play during the same session they were injured. In the age-weight league 142 athletes returned to play during the same session. Because there was a comparison between an age-weight league and an age-only league, distributions across the age ranges were also analyzed. It was found that there was no significant correlation between the age of the athlete and injury rate. Discussion: A t-test was performed on the age-only league to see if there was a correlation between weight and the likelihood of having a concussion. The null hypothesis was that there was no correlation between the two factors. The p-value was small enough to determine that this test was not statistically significant and therefore failing to reject the alternative hypothesis that there is a correlation between the two factors. There was no correlation between the age of the athlete and the injury rate. The future of this project is to continue tracking the injuries in youth football and compare the injury rates further. Expansion to other sports, like soccer and basketball, can help to get a better holistic look at injuries at the youth level