The Issue

Girls and women experience ACL injuries at significantly higher rates than boys and men, particularly during adolescence. Traditional approaches to injury focus on the biological aspects of an individual athlete, including genetics, muscle strength, and fitness. Alternatively, we propose that everything surrounding the athlete (e.g., social norms, practices) can be influential on athlete health and injury risk, and believe it is important to intervene at a socio-structural level. When it comes to female athletes, we know that sport environments can be highly gendered, but we do not yet know how that may relate to ACL injury risk.

Why this matters?

An alternative perspective is that injury risk may also be influenced by the broader sport environment. Gendered norms, expectations, and practices within sport can shape athletes' opportunities, training conditions, access to resources, and pathways through sport. As these environmental factors are socially constructed and modifiable, they represent an important opportunity for injury prevention.

Project Aims

Working in partnership with Sport Manitoba, this project explores how gendered aspects of sport environments may create the conditions for increased ACL injury risk for adolescent girls in sports that are traditionally male (lacrosse, baseball, and tackle football). This will involve characterizing how gender may be embedded in lacrosse, baseball, and football environments, and describing possible connections between identified gendered characteristics and injury rates. The findings will be used to generate an evidence-based online coaching educational resource.

What This Project Does

Working in partnership with Sport Manitoba, this project explores how gendered aspects of sport environments may create the conditions for increased ACL injury risk for adolescent girls in sports that are traditionally male (lacrosse, baseball, and tackle football). This will involve characterizing how gender may be embedded in lacrosse, baseball, and football environments, and describing possible connections between identified gendered characteristics and injury rates. The findings will be used to generate an evidence-based online coaching educational resource.