OBJECTIVE To provide certified athletic trainers, physicians, and other health care professionals with recommendations on best practices for the prevention of overuse sports injuries in pediatric athletes (aged 6-18 years). BACKGROUND Participation in sports by the pediatric population has grown tremendously over the years. Although the health benefits of participation in competitive and recr...

Sport provides a context in which mate choice can be facilitated by the display of athletic prowess. Previous work has shown that, for females, team sport athletes are more desirable as mates than individual sport athletes and non-participants. In the present study, the perceptions of males and females were examined regarding potential mates based on sport participation. It was predicted that t...

Fantasy football participation is an extremely-popular, yet unique online activity that combines traditional sport fandom with interactive components to enhance a fan’s overall sport experience. The player-specific concentration of the game, however, has the potential to alter traditional team-focused loyalties that have driven sport consumer behavior inquiry for decades. Due to this intriguing...

The long-term health effects of concussion and sub-concussive impacts in sport are unknown. Growing evidence suggests both inflammation and neurodegeneration are pivotal to secondary injury processes and the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases. In the present study we characterized circulating brain injury and inflammatory mediators in healthy male and female athletes according to concussion...

Regular exercise has been well established to be of physical and psychological benefit to the growing child. Recently, the issue of sudden death during sport has been brought to public attention after the tragic deaths of a few high profile athletes. The need for screening before participation has been queried and task forces have been established to devise recommendations in this area. Physici...

This study reports on a comparison of how two different groups of people with an amputation view their bodies and perceive how others view them. One group has a history of sport participation, while the other has not. The analysis is based on 14 semistructured interviews with people with amputations: 7 were engaged in sport and 7 were not. The following themes emerged: Body, Prosthesis, Indepen...

BACKGROUND Sport specialization is a strategy to acquire superior sport performance in 1 sport but is associated with increased injury risk. Currently, the degree of high school specialization among Division I athletes is unknown. HYPOTHESIS College athletes will display increased rates of specialization as they progress through their high school careers. STUDY DESIGN Descriptive epidemiolo...

BACKGROUND Within the context of problem-behaviour theory, this study investigated the intra-relationship between attitudes and behaviours towards exercise, sport involvement, violence in sport-related events, eating fruits, smoking and hashish or ecstasy use in a sample of Greek adolescents. Age and gender patterns are considered. METHODS Participants were 5991 Greek school pupils who respon...

Understanding why sport fans socially interact with other fans, participate in team-related discussions, recruit new members, and retain membership in sport fan communities is an important issue for sport marketers. In this study, we tested a model of fan community identification that included outcome and moderator variables in the contexts of two major professional sport leagues (soccer and ba...