Virginia Research Day 2025

Medical Student Research Clinical

26 Incidence of Lower Extremity Injuries and the Association with Strength and Conditioning Programming Changes in Virginia Tech Athletes

Thuyduong Nguyen 1 ; Grayson Punzalan 1 ; Victor Tran 1 ; Matthew Chung, DO, CAQSM 1,2 Corresponding author: tnguyen02@vcom.edu

1 Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine - Virginia Campus 2 Virginia Tech Sports Medicine: Blacksburg, VA

soccer and women’s lacrosse from August 2018 to April 2024. Cases that fit the inclusion criteria were pooled and organized by sport and year to determine which years had higher incidences of lower limb injury. This data will be discussed with the head S&C coach at Virginia Tech Athletics to see what changes had been made to their S&C regimen compared to the year before. Results: There were 87 total injuries between the years of 2018 and 2024 in Virginia Tech soccer and lacrosse players. Both women’s soccer and lacrosse had the most injuries in the given timeframe between August 2020 and July 2021. Men’s soccer saw a higher number of injuries between August 2022 to

July 2023, but only had two years of data. We are meeting next week with the S&C coach to see what changes were made to S&C for these time frames. Conclusion: Pending meeting with S&C coach. Based on our preliminary findings, one factor to consider would be COVID restrictions and their effect on S&C and injury prevalence. It would be interesting to see if there is a “COVID effect” on injury incidence in other sports and/or with other injuries. IRB Exemption granted by Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine IRB

Objective: Injuries to college athletes can negatively impact their performance or be career ending. There is limited literature analyzing the relationship between collegiate athletes’ injuries and their strength and conditioning (S&C) training. The research aims to investigate the relationship between the incidence of lower limb injuries in Virginia Tech athletes in the years 2018-2024 and the changes made to their strength and conditioning regimen. For this study, we defined lower limb injuries to be between the knee and the ankle (i.e. tibia, fibula, shins) and limited the athlete population to men’s and women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse. Methods: Data was retrospectively collected from Virginia Tech injury reports for men’s and women’s

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