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Science, sport join hands to improve athletes’ wellbeing by Scott McInerney Science News Reporter
The roar of the crowd on a beautiful fall Saturday, the thumping of “Jump Around,” students counting Bucky’s pushups and Badger fans joining in arms to sing Varsity are all staples to a quintessential game day at Camp Randall. The thrill of the game draws people from across the country to the University of Wisconsin, the home of Badger Athletics and the epitome of the Wisconsin Idea. But, behind the scenes is a conglomeration of special people dedicating their lives to Bucky’s success. School of Education professor Peter Miller has dedicated his career to the nuances of sportsmanship, wearing several hats within the athletics realm at UW. Miller understands the implications of athletics beyond the game itself. “Athletics are a point of durable connections for kids and durable connections for families — even as maybe some other things are not always going as we want them,” Miller said. Miller has served on the UW Athletics Board for almost 10 years and is currently the faculty director of the sports leadership masters program. Miller is also involved in a newer initiative at UW aimed at merging the worlds of sports and science entitled Badger Inquiry on Sport. BIOS follows “the three C’s” — connect, catalyze and communicate. BIOS aims to connect with researchers on campus, conduct their own research and communicate UW research throughout Wisconsin, associate director of BIOS Maria Dehnert said. BIOS associates researchers in areas such as nutrition, psychology, social sciences and medicine with the UW Athletics Department. The fruitful intersection of academics and athletics provides a rich body of data for research that
12 • badgerherald.com • April 4, 2023
allows for a better-informed athletic department. “Our goal really is to bring together campus and athletics in meaningful and purposeful ways. So this has been a really great experience to tie in both my passion for higher education and athletics and being the connector between the two,” Dehnert said. The unique status of world class academics and top-tier athletics empowers UW to be at the forefront of research in sports science. Researchers in kinesiology, sports psychology and various other scientific fields all collaborate with UW Athletics, serving the goal of improving physical and mental health for all.
The Physical Game
From day one on the football team, sophomore Grover Bortolotti noticed the athletic staff’s emphasis on physical fitness. The football team works five days a week with strength trainers who tailor exercise routines for the athletes. “Ever since I stepped foot on campus, the staff kind of ingrained [fitness] in your head,” Bortolottii said. “You need to get a routine and take care of your body so that you can perform at your highest level day in and day out.” Concurrently, researchers at UW dedicate their time to understanding the science of the human body to serve the goal of universal physical activity. Director of Research in the UW Badger Athletic Performance Lab Bryan Heiderscheit uses his background in physical therapy and sports medicine to research how athletic performance is connected to injury. BAP runs a battery of tests on athletes in the preseason. Heiderscheit said athletes sprint, jump and balance to measure running mechanics, joint motion, force outputs and body control. These tests provide both data for research and a benchmark for returning from injury. Injury is a common occurrence in sports. In fact, 3.2 million Americans had sports related injuries treated in the emergency room in
2021 and more than 3.5 million injuries occur each year in youth sports. When a student-athlete gets injured, Heiderscheit said the lab will conduct tests more frequently to measure the pace of their recovery to their preseason status. In doing this, the lab supplies important data on the recovery process for a plethora of injuries and best practices for avoiding reinjury. Some of this data gives researchers muchneeded information regarding risk factors for injuries. One study found less steps per minute in cross country runners increased risk of bone stress injury, and other studies found that factors in the preseason such as lower aerobic capacity — the bodies capacity for oxygen — or decreased sleep can lead to a greater risk of in-season injury. Other studies look at progression of injury recovery, so researchers can determine the ideal time for an athlete to return to action — one study analyzed athletes running on a treadmill at four, six, eight and 12 months after ACL reconstruction surgeries to determine that running mechanics do not return to pre-injury levels within the first year. “If you help somebody recover, that benchmark for recovering is dependent on what sport they play and what level they need to get back to,” Heiderscheit said. “So it makes a real interesting question and puzzle about how you go back to [preinjury status].” Jennifer Sanfilippo is an athletic trainer and has worked in UW Athletics for 11 years. She works in BAP, where she aims to improve athletic health and welfare, both long- and short-term. Sanfilippo said she has collaborated with Wisconsin Sleep, the Osteoporosis Research Center and many other research areas not traditionally linked to sports. These collaborations allow researchers to study more specific factors which might affect athletic performance or injury. In this spirit, Heiderscheit continues to be amazed at how eager people at UW are to collaborate, even after spending over 20 years at the university. “We do have an amazing sports program
here with our student athletes, but on the other side of the road, we have an incredible group of academic minds, scientific minds, who can really take on just about any questions we put to them and come up with some unique solutions to it,” Heiderscheit said. BAP and UW Athletics collect their data from Division I athletes at peak performance, but the data can be used for anyone engaging in physical activity. Heiderscheit said other programs like BAP translate sports research to high school athletics programs, community athletes and just about anyone in the general public so they can minimize risk of injury across all sports and maximize recovery from injuries. “By making sure that we can help individuals at [the D-I level] return to that high-end sport performance, we can definitely do better for the general population in their daily lives,” Heiderscheit said. “So it’s almost like we’re trying to study the best of the best with a goal of applying that information to everyone.” Similarly, master’s students in the Athletic Training program are able to obtain field experience at all levels, from D-I athletes to youth sports and medical clinics, according to associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology David Bell. Bell teaches in the Athletic Training program and is the director of the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory. A key point of interest in the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory is the link between injury and sports specialization, or selecting one sport to play year-round. Bell said the current landscape of youth sports is different than it was 20 to 30 years ago. Today, more athletes are being forced to specialize in one sport at younger ages, leading to greater risk of injury and burnout. And injury at a young age could affect them down the line. “We see injuries that occurred when kids were younger and in older populations and [we see] how that affects their long-term health and well-being,” Bell said. “They just want to lay on the ground and play with their grandkids, and they can’t do that because they have this injury.” Bell said more athletes are arriving at college programs “broken” because of their injury history — a cause of concern for college coaches. To address this, Wisconsin Injury in Sport