Highest Concussion Risk Among College Sports in Preseason is Women’s Gymnastics

Research from the University of Michigan Concussion Center shows that women's gymnastics is above all others when it comes to its preseason concussion rates. 

The rate for gymnasts' concussions was 50 percent higher even than that for college football players, United Press International reported last week. 

Unlike soccer and football, gymnastics hasn't historically been considered a high concussion risk, Steven Broglio, lead researcher and director of the University of Michigan Concussion Center, said. 

"Everybody worries about football, ice hockey and men's and women's soccer, but gymnastics is out there by themselves with a preseason injury risk that we didn't expect to see," Broglio said in a university news release. "We’re not aware of anybody who has identified this problem before, so we now need to look at how to improve the health and safety of the athletes."

Researchers studied sport-related concussion rates for NCAA sports during the preseason practice period and regular season from the 2013-2014 year through the 2018-2019 year.

In the preseason, roughly nine gymnasts for every 10,000 athlete participations experienced concussion — compared to about six football players per 10,000 athlete participations — experienced concussion during the preseason.

While the preseason sessions are practices only, the regular season includes practice and competition.

Broglio said he doesn't know the sport of gymnastics well enough to speculate on what caused the preseason spike. 

Concussion research is lacking on female athletes, Broglio added.

"There is a very clear lack of science in the broader literature around women's sports," Broglio said. "We're hoping research like this shines a light on the deficits in the literature and allows people to take a deeper dive to understand what's going on, to improve outcomes."

In the new study, the other results researchers found were as expected.

In the preseason, the top sports for concussion were gymnastics, football, men's lacrosse, women's volleyball, women's basketball and women's soccer.

That shifted in the regular season to women's and men's ice hockey, men's wrestling, women's soccer, men's football and women's field hockey.

"All sports carry some level of risk, and we should constantly be looking for ways to make sports safer," Broglio said. "We want to optimize performance, but in a healthy and safe way."

The findings were presented recently at the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting in Denver. Such research is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.