SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/338693
www.stma.org July 2014 | SportsTurf 11 these situations, rubber can be hand-applied and worked in with stiff- bristled push brooms. Large scale additions of rubber often require repeated light applications of crumb rubber using a topdresser fol- lowed by grooming with a drag broom. Recently, head injuries have received a lot of attention; however, lower extremity injuries can often sideline athletes for longer periods of time. Sometimes the playing field is mentioned as a possible reason for a knee or ankle injury. Often times the type of surface is mentioned as a culprit if the surface is synthetic. If the field is natural turf, the condition of the surface is sometimes blamed. Another, possibly more important factor, is being recognized as a significant contributor to lower extremity injury. That contributor is the shoe. Remember, the traction between a shoe and the surface is affected by both the shoe and the surface. The aggressive cleat patterns found on many of today's most popular athletic footwear are produc- ing traction levels much higher than we have seen in the past. A certain level of traction is needed to run, change direction, and perform other maneuvers necessary for sports. However, high levels of what is called "rotational traction" have been indicated in increased knee and ankle injuries. High rotational traction means that the shoe is resistant to rotating within the turf as a player pivots. In essence, the shoe sticks while the leg rotates. If the shoe sticks, ligaments and tendons are put under additional stress, which may lead to increased injury risk. We recently measured rotational traction of 30 commercially available shoes on Kentucky bluegrass, bermudagrass, and FieldTurf Revolution. The difference among playing surfaces was minimal compared to the large differences found among shoes. Although there is not enough research to set safe and unsafe traction thresholds, our data suggest rotational traction, and therefore injury risk, varies greatly among cleat patterns. Additionally, cleat pattern appears to play a much greater role than the playing surfaces tested. The database with rotational trac- tion information for each shoe on each of the three surfaces can be found on ssrc.psu.edu. We plan to update this database each year with traction data from newly released cleat patterns. A related study that included multiple shoes on various surfaces has recently been published in the April 2014 edition of Applied Turfgrass Science, a peer- reviewed scientific journal. The study can be found on the journal's website, www.agronomy.org/publications/ats. As we all know, injuries are an unfortunate part of sports. However, a proactive approach to field safety can help minimize injury risk. Routine surface hardness testing, adding crumb rubber when infill levels drop, educating trainers and parents about the importance of shoe selection are all things that we can do to provide the safest field possible. Because at the end of the day, the safety of the athletes using our fields is our number one goal. ■ Tom Serensits is manager of Penn State's Center for Sports Surface Research; Dr. Andy McNitt is professor of soil science – turfgrass, and director of the Sports Surface Research Center, as well as coordinator for Penn State's turfgrass science undergraduate program.