ACL Injuries

I'm doing my paper on why ACL injuries are more common in women than men. What I want to find out is why statistics show a much higher percentage of ACL tears in women than men. This topic makes me very curious, being an athlete my self and seeing teammates of mine tear their ACLs. ACL tears are common in basketball, soccer, and volleyball. I of course, play basketball and know how hard it is to recover from an injury like this one, so I want to also learn about prevention to keep myself and other teammates from experiencing something as painful and upsetting as this. An ACL tear is a season ender for sure, and I cannot imagine being benched for an entire season because of injury. That would suck! Anyway, what I've found is that what makes this happen is the way women's hips are shaped and their bone structure. Basically, the muscles that run down the leg from the hip to the knee pulls out the knee cap in women. The joints aren't as stable as men's. That's what causes the injuries. 

Why are ACL injuries more common in female athletes than males? This is the question I am posing and challenging upon myself to become educated on the topic. I find this proposition quite intriguing considering my experiences in athletics and witnessing injuries in my fellow teammates. I strive to learn about prevention of such a tragedy. The biological cause for the higher percentages of injuries of the anterior cruciate ligament in women than men revolves around the structure of hips. The wider alignment of the legs and hips causes the surrounding muscles to extend the placement of the knee cap in an outward motion. This divergence engenders is greater occurrence of these knee injuries in females over males.  

8 Mile

This weekend, I watched a movie called "8 Mile". It explains the life of Eminem, the rapper, and how his life growing up has challenged him in his profession. Eminem grew up in Detroit and constantly experienced gangs, fighting, and drugs. His mom was a drunk and dated trashy men. Eminem, called Rabbit by just about everyone, could have easily told his mom to do whatever she wanted and not cared, but there was one problem: he had a younger sister. He basically had to become another parent of her. His adroit handling of boyfriends that came around their trailer park home kept his sister safe and well taken care of, but he still had dreams of his own. He wanted to be a rapper.
In attempts of trying to get a record deal, Rabbit competed in local rap battles in bars around the city. Rap battles are when two guys get up on stage and affront each other through their songs, but it is all freestyle. They have no time to prepare and have to make things up off the top of their head. Not only was this an avocation for Rabbit, but it was also his way of standing up for himself. Of course, most of the insults thrown at him had to do with him being white and living in a beat up trailer. Somehow though, he always came back with something better, after he got over the time that he choked on stage and was taunted with no end. He was militant and would stand by his friends and family no matter what. In the end, Rabbit wins the battle's final round and begins to get some respect around town. I found it interesting that it wasn't shown that he became famous and successful. It simply showed the struggle in his upbringing and his strong will. "8 Mile" was an interesting and great movie.

Research Update

Oh research papers... a time of hectic disorganization for many. I was previously one of the people who left a lot until the last night and had a late night of typing and editing. I've sworn to myself that won't be me this year. I'm glad that we have some due dates along the way to keep everyone on track. Anyway, research is going pretty well so far. My topic isn't too hard to find information on. By the way, my topic is "why ACL injuries are more common in female athletes than in males". What I've found is very interesting.
Being an athlete myself make this topic relatable for me. I've seen teammates of mine tear their ACLs, and it is not an easy injury or recovery. I have always wondered why I never really hear about many guys tearing their ACLs. I've been researching using EBSCO, which is practical and convenient, and have found that the reason has to do with the alignment of women's hips vs. men's. I hope to learn more about this in more dept. I'm surprisingly kind of enjoying this process so far.

Reading Response

            I am STILL reading "In Pursuit of Perfection" by Geno Auriemma. Don't get me wrong, I love this book, but it's difficult to make more blogs about it. Anyway, in the chapter  I just read, Geno explains how long and difficult of a process it is to become a coach of an elite program like UConn. You can hardly ever leave college and go straight to coaching college. Geno sure didn't.
           Just like everything you do, Geno had to start small. He was an assistant coach of a boys high school team. Then, he got offered to be an assistant coach of Virginia University's women's team. He had not previously been a women's coach, but decided to give it a shot. He ended up staying there for four years, but decided he needed to leave and become a head coach somewhere else. Later along the road, he ended up becoming the head coach of the women's UConn team. He turned that team completely around, and to this day it is one of the best programs women's basketball has ever seen.

JV Tournament

          This weekend, our JV basketball team had a tournament in Central. The tournament had three games in it. Whoever won the most games obviously were the champions. To be honest, I didn't expect much of us. We haven't exactly had a perfect record as a JV team. Nobody anticipated what happened on Saturday. In the first game, we won by a fair amount. Everybody worked together to get the win. We've learned our own roles on the team and play accordingly. In the second game, we dominated. I don't remember the score, but we won by around 20 points, which is a fair amount in a JV game. The third game was the hardest of all.
         In the third game, we started off great. We were up eight to nothing. We held a nice lead up to half time. In the second half, we got tired. We had already played two games that day, one being right before this one. We let them come back because of not getting back on defense fast enough and not matching their intensity. We were down to about one minute left. Alex had just mad one of her free throws, making the score 23-22.  The other team fouled, and it was again our ball. Alex took it out on the side of the courted and passed to me. I hit a long jump shot for two points, putting them just about out of reach. At this point, there was around 30 seconds left, they needed a three to tie it. Somehow, they got a bunch of tries at this because of us going for steals and tipping the ball out of bounds and stuff like that. We all played close defense and held them to their 22 points. It was such a relief to hear that final buzzer and know that we had finished it. The final score was 25-22. We shook hands with the other team, and Coach K brought out our trophy. We took our pictures and all went home with big smiles on our faces. I'd say it's been a pretty good weekend.