Yet teaching coaches how to develop healthy players is just one step in reducing the danger. Another, the experts said, is emphasizing the purpose of youth sports – teamwork, dedication and sportsmanship.

“Sports by themselves don’t teach any of those things,” said Roch King, coordinator of the graduate coaching program at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. “It’s the people who are leading the organizations that teach those things.”

Small athletes, big injuries

Statistics show injuries among young athletes are common, though they do not necessarily show how those injuries are changing. Evidence of that is instead found walking into the offices of doctors like Lyle Micheli, who report they are seeing more children suffering from problems more commonly found in older adults.

Year-round organized sports, and their repetitive drills, have introduced adult conditions like stress fractures, bursitis and tendonitis to the world of children’s games.

“We are now seeing these overuse, or overtraining, injuries that we never used to see very much before,” said Micheli, who works with youth sports groups and advocates education about injuries and their prevention.

Doctors report increased cases of:

> Little League elbow, a condition caused by young baseball pitchers’ repetitive whipping motion. Soft, undeveloped bones in the elbow are more easily damaged during growth spurts. These injuries can lead to arthritis in young adults.

> Elbow ligament damage, also related to overtraining young pitchers. This condition can lead to ligament replacement surgery, a procedure once reserved for big league pitchers but that is increasingly common among high school athletes.

> Life-threatening brain hemorrhages, which afflict athletes who return to action too soon after a concussion. Even minor contact after a concussion can cause a lesser but still serious condition known as second-impact syndrome.

> Patellar pain syndrome, which happens when repetitive stress wears cartilage in the knee. Once unknown among young athletes, the condition is marked by pain and swelling. It is now the number one diagnosis for children in Micheli’s clinic.

Wear and tear