Date of Award

Spring 5-5-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Exercise Science

First Reader

Teresa Moore

Second Reader

Steve Sawyer

Abstract

Youth football is a declining sport this day in age, and this decline can be associated with the negative connotations on football portrayed by the media. Parents need a sense of security when it comes to the health of their children, and this can be achieved by creating a safer environment; one in which young athletes correctly learn safe techniques improving the quality of the game, leading to a decrease in injuries. By creating a website that details instructions and provides protocols to educate coaches on proper preventative injury practices, football can take a step forward in injury prevention, resulting in a decrease youth football injuries. The thesis contains several sections starting from detailed descriptions of prevalent injuries, containing the physiological reasons for injury to skeletal muscle. It then continues to define the physiological components to these injuries that can be prevented using certain preventative injury protocols. Building upon the functional stepping-stones, a coach’s guide was created in order to offer coaches across America the knowledge and strategy essential to provide a fun and safe environment for today’s youth. WeStayHealthyTogether is a pneumonic created for the four main ideas that will be discussed: warmup, stretch, hydrate, and technique. An interactive website was created based on these principle to be used as an educational resource for coaches and parents across America. The mission of WeStayHealthyTogether.com is to provide coaches and players an educational resource for preventative injury practices in youth football. Using these four key protocols, WeStayHealthyTogether.com hopes to reduce rate of injury in youth football, and increase participation while doing so. In the future, WeStayHealthyTogether.com aims to expand its preventative injury protocols to other sports as well.

First Page

1

Last Page

39

Rights

© 2016, William Edward Allen III

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