Playing lacrosse has great benefits — fitness, teamwork, and social connections. But like all sports, there’s always a risk of injury. Most lacrosse injuries are minor, such as bruises, sprains, or muscle strains. Still, more serious injuries can happen, and very rarely, even life-threatening ones.
USA Lacrosse and MedStar Health are working together to make the sport safer. Injury prevention is key to making the game better for players, families, and fans.
At the simplest level, injuries happen when the body can’t handle the force or stress put on it, whether from contact, movement, or the environment.
But it’s not always that simple. Injuries depend on many factors: a player’s physical condition, mental focus, field conditions, style of play, and even social pressures. One day an athlete may get hurt in a situation where another player would not.
Researchers also face challenges. What works in a controlled study doesn’t always translate perfectly to real game and practice situations.
A Brief History of Injury Prevention in Sports
For a long time, sports injuries were just seen as “accidents” — bad luck that was part of the game. Then, people began to look at injuries in a simple cause-and-effect way (for example, “getting hit by a ball hurts, so avoid getting hit”).
Over time, experts borrowed ideas from public health. They began studying all the different factors — player, environment, rules, and culture — that affect injuries.
Today, researchers use big data and even artificial intelligence to better predict and prevent injuries in athletes.
Types of Lacrosse Injuries
There are two main categories:
1. Traumatic injuries – caused by one big event, like twisting a knee and tearing an ACL.
2. Overuse injuries – caused by smaller stresses repeated over time, like tendonitis or stress fractures.
In both cases, the body is pushed beyond what it can handle. To keep players healthy, we can either:
⦁ Help them better absorb stress (be stronger, more flexible, better conditioned), or
⦁ Reduce the amount of stress they face (through rules, equipment, or limiting play).
In lacrosse, traumatic injuries are often grouped by contact type:
⦁ Body-to-body
⦁ Body-to-ground
⦁ Stick or ball-to-body
Knowing the type helps guide prevention strategies. The right rules, gear, or training may differ between men’s and women’s lacrosse, youth and college levels, or box and field play.
Risk Factors for Injury
Risk factors are things that make injuries more likely. They fall into two categories:
Intrinsic (internal to the player):
⦁ Age, gender, and maturity level
⦁ Strength, flexibility, and movement patterns
⦁ Fatigue, hydration, and stress
⦁ Risk-taking behaviors
Extrinsic (external factors):
⦁ Field and weather conditions
⦁ Pressure to play through pain
⦁ Playing at higher levels before being ready
⦁ Rules, scheduling, and enforcement
The Haddon Matrix
Originally created to study car crashes, the Haddon Matrix helps us understand sports injuries by looking at:
1. The player (their body and characteristics)
2. The environment (field, weather, culture, rules)
3. The cause (the energy or impact that led to injury)
It also considers timing:
⦁ Before the event (like a player’s fitness or training)
⦁ During the event (like the speed of a ball hitting a player)
⦁ After the event (like emergency response and recovery)
By filling in these boxes, we can see what factors lead to injuries and how to prevent them.
The Socioecological Model
This model looks at how injury risks and prevention happen at different levels:
⦁ Individual: The player’s age, fitness, mindset
⦁ Interpersonal: Coaches, parents, and teammates
⦁ Community: Fields, medical staff, local resources
⦁ Societal: Rules, policies, cultural attitudes, education
For example, to prevent sudden cardiac death in lacrosse (from commotio cordis, a rare impact-related condition), we need:
⦁ Protective equipment for players
⦁ Coaches and parents encouraging its use
⦁ Fields with AEDs (defibrillators) and staff trained to use them
⦁ A culture that raises awareness and prioritizes safety
Prevention only works when all levels — individual, team, community, and society — support it.
Final Thoughts
Preventing lacrosse injuries is complex, but using multiple approaches works best. We need to look at both individual players and the larger community around them. In our next article, we’ll apply these ideas to specific injuries common in lacrosse, like low back stress fractures and ACL tears.
In upcoming issues of Lacrosse Health, we’ll cover:
⦁ Common types of injuries in lacrosse.
⦁ Risk factors that increase the chance of getting hurt.
⦁ How lessons from other fields, like car safety, can apply to lacrosse.
