Sports Injuries

What are sports injuries?

Sports injuries can happen to young athletes at any level, in any sport, as well as any child or teen engaged in active play. Whether your child runs, jumps, throws, swims, flips, dances, rows, skis or climbs, they may pull a muscle, twist an ankle or develop pain.

Acute injuries are problems that happened recently. Chronic injuries are those have been bothering your child for weeks, months or maybe even longer. Both acute and chronic sports injuries need proper attention. Getting the right sport injury treatment can help your child heal well so they can enjoy being active again, perform at their best and prevent future injuries as they grow.

Common Sports Injuries

These are some of the most common pediatric sports injuries. 

ACL, MCL and PCL injuries

These are injuries to knee ligaments — the bands that keep your child’s or adolescent’s knee from wobbling or giving out when they move. 

When the knee is forced out of place, a ligament can tear partway or all the way. Tears often happen when children stop or change direction all of a sudden or when they twist their knees or bend their knees sideways. 

Read more about injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial collateral ligament (MCL) and posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). 

Chronic exertional compartment syndrome

This sports injury happens when pressure goes up in a group of muscles surrounded by fascia. It can cause pain, cramping and sometimes numbness, tingling or weakness. It often affects athletes who do a lot of running in their sport. 

Typically, symptoms get worse as your child exercises. They go away after your child stops and then come back when your child does the same type of exercise again. 

Concussions

A concussion is a brain injury caused by a bump or blow to the head or body that makes the brain move back and forth quickly inside the skull. Children do not have to lose consciousness or be “knocked out” to have a concussion. 

If your child returns to play before the brain heals, another bump or blow can cause more damage. 

Read more about concussions and our Concussion Program. 

Elbow and wrist problems

Like many other joints, the elbow and wrist can be injured either from a single forceful event, like a fall, or from a motion your child does over and over as part of their sport. Examples of sports injuries that can affect the elbow and wrist include: 

• Little League elbow
• Osteochondritis dissecans of the elbow
• Ulnar collateral ligament injury
• Wrist pain in gymnasts 

Fractures

Fractures are cracks or breaks in bones. 

Most fractures are traumatic — meaning they happen because of an injury, such as falling while running, pedaling a bicycle or riding a skateboard. The bone simply gets more force than it can handle, and it breaks. 

Stress fractures can happen when an athlete repeats the same position or motion over and over for a long time. The shinbone is a common place for stress fractures in activities that involve running or jumping. 

Read more about fractures and our Fracture Program. 

Growth plate injuries

When children or teens sprain ligaments, break bones or have other sports injuries, they may damage their growth plates.  

Growth plate injuries can stop a bone’s development and change how the bone works. If only part of the growth plate is damaged and stops working, the bone may grow in an uneven way.  Read more. 

Hip pain

The hip joint takes a lot of stress in sports that involve running, jumping or stopping and starting quickly. Tight or strained muscles in the hip or leg may cause pain around the hip joint. The hip may be injured during a fall too. 

Read about hip fractures. 

ITB syndrome

Your child’s or teen’s iliotibial band (ITB) is a long tendon on the outside of their thigh. It connects the muscles around their hip and buttocks to the bone just below their knee. This is a common place for sports injuries.

Pain may start at the outside of the knee where the tendon rubs over the bone. Sometimes the pain goes up the side of the thigh too. Often this problem happens from stressing the band over and over, such as by running. 

Knee pain

Knee pain can happen for many reasons: 

• The kneecap can get pulled to the side so it does not line up well with the knee joint (patellofemoral syndrome, PDF, Spanish) or tight muscles on the front or back of the thigh can put pressure on the knee.
• Swelling and pain can develop in the kneecap tendon or where the tendon connects the thigh muscles to the kneecap (Sinding-Larsen-Johansson syndrome, PDF, Spanish) or the shinbone (Osgood-Schlatter disease, PDF, Spanish).
• In jumper’s knee (patellar tendinitis, PDF, Spanish) your child’s or teen’s kneecap tendon gets inflamed from being stressed over and over.

Other problems with bones or ligaments in the knee can cause pain too. These include patellar dislocation  and osteochondritis dissecans. Read more. 

Meniscal tears

The meniscus is a pad of tissue in your child’s or teen’s knee that absorbs shock. It lies between their shinbone and their thighbone. 

Most of the time, the pad tears when a child twists their knee all of a sudden. Read more. 

Neck and back pain

Many motions in sports can strain, twist or compress the neck or back in ways that may cause pain. When athletes run into each other or fall down, the impact can injure the neck or back too. Overuse injuries, like a stress fracture  in the low back (spondylolysis), can also happen. 

Read more about neck problems, back pain and spondylolysis. 

Sever’s syndrome

Sever’s syndrome is pain at the back or bottom of your child’s or teen’s heel. It happens because the growth center of the heel bone gets irritated. The growth center is the place where new bone forms. It’s weaker than the rest of the bone, and it can get injured if stress is put on it again and again. Sever’s syndrome isn’t always a sports injury, but it’s more common in children who are active — and it may feel worse the more active they are. Read more (PDF) (Spanish). 

Shin splints

Shin splints are pain in the muscle on the front of your child’s or teen’s lower leg.

Shin splints often happen after running on a hard surface or in shoes that do not absorb shock well. Training too hard or for too long, instead of building strength slowly over time, can cause shin splints too.

Shoulder problems

Throwing or reaching overhead, as in swimming, shooting a basketball or playing baseball, can cause a sudden injury, or a problem can form slowly from moving the same way again and again. 

Sports injuries to the shoulder may include: 

• Little League shoulder (PDF) (Spanish) 
• Rotator cuff tendonitis (PDF) (Spanish) 
• Separated shoulder
• Shoulder instability 

Strains, sprains and tendonitis

Strains happen when muscles or tendons get stretched too far or torn partway. Sprains happen when ligaments are stretched or torn. In tendonitis, a tendon becomes swollen and painful. 

Often you can take care of minor strains and sprains or tendonitis at home. But it’s important for a healthcare provider to check for broken bones or other problems and make sure the damage heals well. 

Read more about: 

• Ankle sprain (PDF) (Spanish) 
• Achilles tendinopathy (PDF) (Spanish) 
• Patellar tendonitis (PDF) (Spanish)
• Rotator cuff tendonitis (PDF) (Spanish)

How are sports injuries diagnosed?

To help diagnose sport injuries, your child’s healthcare provider may ask:

• How your child was injured or what happened before your child’s symptoms started
• What symptoms your child has, like if they have pain, how bad it is, when it began and how it affects their activities
• If your child had any past injuries to the same area

They will also examine your child to check your child’s bones, joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments.

This may give us enough information to know what your child’s injury is and what treatment they need.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to do imaging studies to get more details. These could include:

• X-ray
• MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan
• CT (computed tomography) scan

How are sports injuries treated?

Every child is different, and there’s a wide range of sports injuries. So, your child needs care designed for their situation and stage of development.

The best sports injury treatment includes:

• Care to help with your child’s symptoms
• Treatment to heal the current injury
• Attention to avoiding long-term problems that could arise later
• Steps to prevent repeat or new injuries
• Expert guidance so your child can safely return to their sport or activity and perform at the level they want to

Based on your child’s injury, treatment could include both surgical and nonsurgical options.

To restore health and function, we often use nonsurgical methods like physical therapy (PT), including sports PT. Therapy for sports injuries may involve a home exercise program. These types of sports injury rehabilitation, along with nutrition, can support your child’s healing now and help prevent injuries in the future.

For children and teens who need surgery, Seattle Children’s has pediatric orthopedic surgeons with expanded fellowship training in sports medicine. We use surgery methods that limit the risk of injury to growing bones, like growth plate–sparing surgery for knee ligament reconstruction.