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According to NCAA.org and the NCAA Student-Athlete Ethnicity Report

published in Feb. 2010, there are 420,000 student athletes in all

three levels of NCAA competition combined. The NCAA administers 88

championships in 23 sports, and several other club sports exist

that are not regulated. 

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The NCAA recognized that many of these sports present athletes with

the risk of injury, so the organization sponsored a 16-year study

to find out which sports produced the most injuries and how many

injuries occurred. 

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The study ran from 1988 to 2004 and included 16 sports, including

football, baseball, softball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s

and women’s soccer and volleyball. It was based around a program

called the Injury Surveillance System (ISS) employed by the NCAA

and the results were released in the Journal of Athletic

Training. 

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In general, participation in college athletics is safe, but these

data indicate modifiable factors that, if addressed through injury

prevention initiatives, may contribute to lower injury rates in

collegiate sports, according to the report. 

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During the 16-year period of the studies, 182,000 injuries were

recorded. An injury was defined in the report as an incident that

required medical attention and resulted in the loss of at least one

day of time. This number occurred in 1,000,000 “athlete-exposures,”

including practices and games. 

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The study found that the most common injury across the 16 sports is

an ankle ligament sprain, which accounted for 15 percent of the

injuries logged.  Over 50 percent of the 182,000 injuries recorded

were to the lower half of the body.

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“This season we started out with two girls who couldn’t even play

in the scrimmage because they were hurt,” UNA volleyball player Ari

Smith said. “I don’t think there’s ever a time when someone isn’t

in some kind of pain. To me it’s more uncommon to not be injured

and you just play through the pain. I have never met anyone that

plays a sport that doesn’t have some sort of injury.”

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The photo of UNA kicker Josh Roberts, and the boxes above,

illustrate some of the most common injuries in

sports.