Which Youth Sports Cause the Most Concussions (2024)

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Which Youth Sports Cause the Most Concussions? ›

Football is the high school sport that has the most concussions. Per 10,000 athletic exposures, high school football players will have an average of 11.2 concussions. This is a higher rate than both college and professional football players.

In the United States, football is consistently the sport with the highest overall number and rate of concussions. This is true across all levels of play. Each season, around one in twenty youth players under age 14 sustain a concussion each season.

Though football has the highest concussion rate of any American youth sport, many sports — some of which may surprise you — significantly increase youth athletes' risk of brain injury. Understanding and preventing sports-related youth concussions is important to the health of our athletes.

In what sports are concussions most often reported? Concussions occur in all sports with the highest incidence in football, hockey, rugby, soccer and basketball.

Sports-related concussions often result in mental and physical symptoms (e.g., inability to concentrate, forgetfulness, headache, fatigue, dizziness). For many athletes, the symptoms disappear after about 10 days, and they typically do not last more than several months.

Based on the national estimate, the majority of concussions resulted from participation in football (40.5%, n = 55 007), followed by girls' soccer (21.5%, n = 29 167), boys' soccer (15.4%, n = 20 929), and girls' basketball (9.5%, n = 12 923).

They generally occur with any sudden or repeated impact to the head that causes the brain to move back and forth. Boy's tackle football leads the way in causes of concussion; however, concussions also are prevalent in boy's and girl's lacrosse, soccer, field hockey and basketball.

The index determined the safest sport any high school athlete can play is tennis. Overall, tennis was found to lead to low injuries, concussions, time loss due to injuries, surgery and catastrophic injuries in high school athletes.

The average number of head/neck injury fatalities over the entire time period was nine per year. Seventeen high school athletes died from head trauma after sustaining concussions in the days or weeks prior to their death.

Boys Football has the most concussion rates

Per 10,000 athletic exposures, high school football players will have an average of 11.2 concussions. This is a higher rate than both college and professional football players.

What are the top 5 sports that cause concussions? ›

Concussions occur in all sports with the highest incidence in American football, ice hockey, rugby, soccer, and basketball. In addition to concussions caused by a single severe impact, multiple minor impacts may also cause brain injury.

Youth football concussion rate is 5%, study finds.

One of the most common ways children and adolescents get concussions is through sports injuries. A recent review estimated that up to 3.8 million recreation- and sports-related concussions occur each year in the United States. The sport with the highest risk of concussion in high school is football.

Children's brains do not have the amount of coating, or myelination, as adult brains. Additionally, nerve fibers in children allow more acceleration of the brain with a big hit, and because the brain is lighter than an adult brain, it can move more easily.

The overall incidence of concussion among youth athletes was 1,250 (12.1%). The relative risk for a concussion was almost two times greater in 18-year olds than in 13-year-old athletes.

Football. Football is where most high school concussions happen by a wide margin. About half of those concussions in high school football occur during running plays. About 31% occur when a player is being tackled by another player, and 23% happen to a player as he tackles an opponent.