Youth Sports Becoming Too Competitive?

We’re sports nuts here at Hardison & Cochran. If you’re a frequent reader of the blog, you knew that. Since we’re sports nuts, articles on youth sports always catch our eye. Gretchen Reynolds, who writes for the New York Times Health blog, had an interesting post yesterday on a new trend of knee injury which physicians once believed couldn’t happen to children.

The injury being covered in the post is an anterior cruciate ligament (A.C.L.) tear. At one time, physicians believed children were immune to an A.C.L tear. “Twenty years ago, medical textbooks usually included a statement saying that kids did not tear their A.C.L., that they fractured the tibial spine instead,” said orthopedic surgeon, Dr. J. Todd Lawrence.

So what’s going on? Dr. Lawrence has a thought on this:

“I think it’s primarily because kids are out there trying to emulate professional athletes, You see these very young athletes playing sports at an extremely intense, competitive level. Kids didn’t play at that level 20 years ago. They didn’t play one sport year-round.”

The full article, which can be viewed here, is a great read.

So what is your opinion on this? Are kids playing too hard these days? Let us know in the comments section.

*Picture courtesy of accutalk via Flickr Creative Commons.