A new study, led by a professor at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, has found that the concussion obsession that has surrounded football for the past decade or so may soon have some company from other sports, and some of those sports may surprise you.
According to the study that was presented at an annual conference for orthopedic surgeons, girl's soccer has the highest per capita rate of concussion among high school sports, and they hold the spot by a pretty significant amount.
The research shows that roughly 27% of all injuries suffered by girl's soccer players are traumatic brain injuries, while football reported a 24% correlation between brain injuries and overall injuries.
For quite some time now, there have been claims of concussion issues in sports like girls soccer, but this appears to be the first concrete study showing it. According to the article:
To our knowledge, this is the first study to report that concussions now account for a higher proportion of injuries in girls soccer than boys football. The concussion rate for girls soccer is also increasing rapidly, and is now nearly tied with boys football and 3-fold higher than boys soccer.
Comparatively, football's numbers fall within about a percentage point of both girls basketball and boys soccer - both sports you hear little to no concussion conversations about.
The study also shows that there was a "significantly higher proportion of concussions" among girls sports vs. boys sports.