Play For Hope

As we told you earlier, we have had the great opportunity of working in coordination with Duke University’s Doctoral Department of Physical Therapy to begin testing our players for injury risk.  The test is used by many professional sports teams around the world and it is always a thrill for us to tell our players that they are having the opportunity to complete the same test as many of their sports heroes.  In total we were able to test an initial 69 players to determine for their injury risk.

The test has uncovered some movement pattern problems for our players, which could lead to injury problems.  This information  will allow us to begin giving them some basic exercises to reduce their risk of injuring themselves.  Non-contact sports injuries (which are the only type of injury risk that can truly be prevented) are very common among our athletes.  Because many of our players are vulnerable children and there is a lack of higher level medical care for the common Rwandan, a torn ACL or similar injury is a much bigger problem for a them than for a similar player in America.  Because of this we are extremely excited to begin doing prehab, even if at first for only some of our players, and to teach our coaches how to better prevent and immediately care for injuries (more on the second part later).   We are hoping this will help us to better prepare our youth both to pursue their dreams in sports and to protect their future whether they continue with sports or other work.  Check out some pictures of the testing below.

Josh testing rotary stability 

Testing the deep squat 

Hurdle Step (Please note the UNC shirt... even if we are working with Duke, Play For Hope was founded by and run by Tarheels) 

 Carrying the FMS kits

He had to try too!