ROOTED IN RESEARCH
DOES VARIABILITY WITHIN SPORTS FIELDS INFLUENCE GROUND-DERIVED INJURIES?
By Chase M. Straw, PhD; Christine O. Samson; Gerald M. Henry, PhD; and Cathleen N. Brown, PhD. Edited for “Rooted in Research” by Casey Reynolds, PhD.
Sports fields often exhibit within-field variations due to climatic conditions, field construction, field management, and foot traffic patterns from field usage. Tis is true on natural turfgrass sports fields where variation may derive from moisture, compaction, soil texture, turfgrass density, etc., while in plastic (synthetic) sports fields this variation may be due to fiber length or wear, crumb rubber distribution, poor grooming or maintenance practices, etc.
Variations within a field could influence the playing surface predictability and require athletes to make abrupt or frequent adjustments that lead to increased ground- derived injury occurrence. For example, changes in surface hardness can affect biomechanical loads and movement by athletes causing them to adjust leg stiffness when running. Te ability to quickly change leg stiffness helps an athlete maintain dynamic stability once field conditions change; conversely, the inability to do so may make them susceptible to injury. Furthermore, changes in traction can influence sudden stops and pivoting. Tis study introduces a new methodology aimed at evaluating the potential relationship between within-field variations of turfgrass sports field properties and ground-derived athlete injuries.
To date, recent studies have compared objective field data to injury occurrence on turfgrass sports fields based on the use of penetrometers and Clegg impact testers to correlate surface hardness to injury occurrence at various locations within sports fields. While these tests are extremely helpful for testing variations among surface hardness within fields, they neglect the influence of playing surface predictability.
Global positioning system-equipped data acquisitions are becoming prevalent in the turfgrass industry to obtain geo-referenced field data for the creation of spatial maps and identification of within-field variability. More
TPI Turf News July/August 2018
A Clegg impact tester (Clegg hammer) used for measuring surface hardness.
Te gauge for a Clegg impact tester.
intensive sampling than the aforementioned studies is required to detect small-scale spatial variations. Maps of field properties can not only be used for precision turfgrass management, but they may also be useful to evaluate the influence of within-field variations on injury occurrence. Terefore, researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) conducted a preliminary study to investigate whether a relationship between within-field variations and ground- derived injuries (i.e. any injury directly caused by the playing surface) exists.
A two-year study (each comprised of a fall [August– November] and spring [January–May] period) was conducted at UGA, a university in the southeast United States, on Club and Recreational fields. Two fields were selected for use, one of which was constructed on a 25 cm (9.8 inch) sand cap with clay beneath and the other on a sandy loam native soil. Te fields each had hybrid bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L. (Pers.) × Cynodon transvaalensis Burtt-Davy] mowed at 2.5 cm (0.984 in.). Participants were Club Sports athletes from the
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