Athletic identity, or the degree with which individuals identify with the athlete role, is an important rehabilitation factor for sports care providers to consider; however, it lacks extensive study in youth. The purpose of this study was to identify demographic, sport participation, and psychosocial measures which correlate with youth athletic identity after anterior cruciate ligament injury. Participants completed standardized sports medicine intake and patient-reported outcome measures, including the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS). A total of 226 participants were included, and two groups were created based on high or low total AIMS score. Results indicated that sex (p = 0.002), years active in sport (p = 0.049), activity level (p = 0.038), and ACSI-Coachability (p = 0.027) differed by AIMS score. While youth athletes appear resilient, these results emphasize that they identify strongly with the athlete role and may suffer psychosocial consequences after injury. Future work should evaluate similar factors over course of recovery in a larger, diversified population.

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The need to complete multiple tasks concurrently is a common occurrence both daily life and in occupational activities, which can often include simultaneous cognitive and physical demands. As one example, there is increasing availability of head-worn display technologies that can be employed when a user is mobile (e.g., while walking). This new method of information presentation may, however, introduce risks of adverse outcomes such as a decrement to gait performance. The goal of this study was thus to quantify the effects of a head-worn display (i.e., smart glasses) on motor variability during gait and to compare these effects with those of other common information displays (i.e., smartphone and paper-based system). Twenty participants completed four walking conditions, as a single task and in three dual-task conditions (three information displays). In the dual-task conditions, the information display was used to present several cognitive tasks. Three different measures were used to quantify variability in gait parameters for each walking condition (using the cycle-to-cycle standard deviation, sample entropy, and the “goal-equivalent manifold” approach). Our results indicated that participants used less adaptable gait strategies in dual-task walking using the paper-based system and smartphone conditions compared with single-task walking. Gait performance, however, was less affected during dual-task walking with the smart glasses. We conclude that the risk of an adverse gait event (e.g., a fall) in head-down walking conditions (i.e., the paper-based system and smartphone conditions) were higher than in single-task walking, and that head-worn displays might help reduce the risk of such events during dual-task gait conditions.

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in female adolescent athletes occur at disproportionately high levels compared to their male counterparts. However, limited prospective data exist on the validity of low-cost screening tools that can proactively identify ACL injury risk, specifically for female athletes. The purpose of this study was to assess the concurrent validity of a three-task injury risk factor assessment by comparing visually derived outcome scores from two-dimensional (2D) video data with dichotomized three-dimensional (3D) biomechanical variables collected using motion capture technology. A total of 41 female club volleyball athletes (14.7 ± 1.4 years) were tested and asked to perform three tasks: double-leg vertical jump (DLVJ), single-leg squat (SLS), and single-leg drop landing (SLDL). One rater was trained on the scoring criteria for the 2D data and independently scored one forward-facing and one side-facing video for each task. Risk factors identified included poor knee position, lateral trunk lean, and excessive trunk flexion/extension. In addition, 3D joint angles were calculated for the trunk and knee in the sagittal and frontal planes and converted to dichotomous variables based on biomechanical thresholds of injury risk. For comparison of 2D and 3D outcomes, percent agreement and Cohen's kappa were calculated for each risk factor individually. Overall, 2D scores were found to exhibit moderate to excellent percent agreement with 3D outcomes for trunk position (69.1–97.1%). Specifically, ipsilateral trunk lean during single-leg tasks exhibited the highest agreement (85.3–88.2%) with moderate reliability (κ = 0.452–0.465). In addition, moderate to substantial reliability was found for trunk flexion during double-leg tasks (κ = 0.521–0.653); however, an evaluation of single-leg tasks resulted in only fair reliability (κ = 0.354). Furthermore, 2D scores were not successful in identifying poor knee position as percent agreement fell below 50% for both the single-leg tasks and averaged 60% agreement across both the phases of the DLVJ. Kappa coefficients further emphasized these trends indicating no to slight concurrent validity (κ = −0.047–0.167) across tasks. Overall, these findings emphasize the potential for valid, low-cost screening tools that can identify high-risk movement patterns. Further study is needed to develop improved assessment guidelines that may be employed through visual assessment in sports environments.

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