Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports

Additional Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports Information

Warrior Girls exposes the downside of the women's sports revolution that has evolved since Title IX: an injury epidemic that is easily ignored because we worry that it will threaten our daughters' hard-won opportunities on the field. From teenage girls playing local soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and other sports to women competing at the elite level, female athletes are suffering serious injuries at alarming rates.

The numbers are frightening and irrefutable. Young female athletes tear their ACLs, the stabilizing ligament in the knee, at rates as high as eight times greater than their male counterparts. Women's collegiate soccer players suffer concussions at the same rate as college football players. From head to toe, female athletes suffer higher rates of injury, and many of them play through constant pain.

Michael Sokolove gives us the most up-to-date research on girls and sports injuries. He takes us into the homes and hearts of female athletes, into operating theaters where orthopedic surgeons reconstruct shredded knees, and onto the practice field of famed University of North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance.

Exhaustively researched and strongly argued, Warrior Girls is an urgent wake-up call for parents and coaches. Sokolove connects the culture of youth sports -- the demands for girls to specialize in a single sport by age ten or younger, and to play it year-round -- directly to the injury epidemic. Devoted to the ideal of team, and deeply bonded with teammates, these tough girls don't want to leave the field even when confronted with serious injury and chronic pain.

Warrior Girls shows how girls can train better and smarter to decrease their risks. It makes clear that parents must come together and demand changes to a sports culture that manufactures injuries. Well-documented, opinionated, and controversial, Warrior Girls shows that all girls can safeguard themselves on the field without sacrificing their hard-won right to be there.

What Customers Say About Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports:

So I read this book with high expectations.It's not that it's a bad book - just not very helpful. The first couple were marginally interesting; but it quickly bogged down to just another story of an injuried girl.

Sokolove presents a few people doing research; but each one is wedded to conflicting theories as to why girls suffer so many ACL injuries. He could have found many girls/women who had ACL replacements and went on to successful high level play.If you're expecting any guidance as to either preventing ACL injuries or good insight as to where the research is headed, you'll be disappointed.

I have four daughters, all who play soccer and basketball. Sokolove simply wrote a book with some ancedotal stories of girls with chronic injuries.

You come away with no better idea as to the reason for the problem or how to prevent it. To top it off, I had an ACL replacement almost 20 years ago.

Most people already know that ACL injuries for girls is a big problem.

No matter what anyone fears about women "measuring up" to males, we all "know" females are built differently from males and deserve to be trained in ways that they can continue to achieve their personal best.The author refers to a program from the Santa MOnica Orthopaedics clinic that appears to be reducing injury rates by improving balance and running mechanics for females. This book shows what is an overwhelming need for girls and women to train smarter, rather than tougher, (what else is new. :-) to avoid the incredible injury rates they incur in sports and military training. Girls/women wreck their knees EIGHT TIMES as often as boys/men in team sports. [.].check this out with whoever coaches your kids. I am. Are you stunned by that. DOnt let your daughters become athletic has beens by 18 and candidates for knee replacements because of poorly designed and monitored training.

Nevertheless, the book "opened my eyes" to the broader issue of the relationship between how our female (and male) athletes are being trained and the injuries we are seeing. As the parent of a competitive figure skater, I have noticed injury "epidemics" in this sport, as well (although they are different types of injuries than those that occur in soccer or basketball). So, it would have been more interesting if the author had been able to expand his research into other types of sports. Heard the author on Dr. It was a good "first step", and I will continue to research the subject matter further. Overall, the book was an interesting read, but it was often redundant. Oz's radio show and purchased the book, as a result. The title suggests that a wide range of sports would be covered, but the author primarily discusses soccer and basketball.

It would be doubly interesting to hear from the Mia Hamm's and Brandy Chastain's of this world as to what our girls should be doing realistically since it appears that when these ladies were in the spotlight, double practices where not required by coaches. This book is highly recommended to all the young ladies and their parents involved with soccer. It is very interesting to learn that we have all forced these new expectations on what we all believe is necessary to succeed.

I was hoping for specific help in what I can do as a coach to help my U11 soccer team avoid ACL injuries. Unfortunately, the book is mostly comprised of anecdotal stories and interviews which the author uses to convince us that there is a problem with ACL injuries in women's athletics. But I appreciate his efforts at calling attention to the problem. A full chapter on specific preventative training methods and exercises would have made this book complete. There are about three pages in the end that suggest solutions to this problem. The author himself seems conflicted as to whether the problem is truly over-participation in a single sport or just a factor of the number of "exposures" a female has to any sport that causes them to changes directions quickly or land on their heels.