Content area
Full Text
Key Points
-
The American Ultimate Disc League Injury Surveillance Program is the first multiseason injury-surveillance program in ultimate.
-
Using the American Ultimate Disc League Injury Surveillance Program, we established injury rates for professional ultimate athletes.
-
Relatively minor lower extremity injuries, such as muscle strains and ankle sprains, were the most common injuries, but nearly half of all injuries resulted in time loss from participation.
-
The epidemiologic data from this study can serve as baseline data for future injury interventions, training procedures, and potential rule changes by teams or the league.
Ultimate Frisbee, which is also known as ultimate, has grown since its founding in New Jersey in 1968 to gaining full recognition by the International Olympic Committee in 2015.1,2 Already a popular medal event at the World Games for nearly 2 decades, ultimate is played around the world by an estimated 7 million men and women of all ages.2 In the United States, male and female athletes compete at organized youth, collegiate, and club levels.3 Since 2012, athletes have been competing on the professional level as part of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which comprises 24 teams across the United States and Canada.1
Designated to be a noncontact or limited-contact sport, ultimate involves a full range of athletic motions in a blend of endurance sprinting, cutting, pivoting, jumping, throwing, and even diving headfirst to catch with an outstretched hand (layout).2,4 Athletes often jump in groups, layout side by side, and unintentionally collide with one another. All contact that is not incidental to game play is considered a foul. The sport, with 7-player teams competing on a field roughly the size of an American football field, is commonly likened to a cross among football, basketball, and soccer.
Whereas ultimate is a popular sport that shares athletic motions with other common sports and, thus, also shares many potential risk factors for injury, research5 concerning its injury patterns and characteristics is limited. Yen et al6 tracked injuries at the 2007 Ultimate Players Association College Championships and showed that more than 50% of men's injuries were due to interathlete contact and more than 50% of all injuries affected the lower extremity. In a retrospective, longitudinal study of a...