Warning about youngsters and sports activities: Misplaced exercise time throughout pandemic has docs seeing extra accidents

By Mitch Rapp Last updated May 11, 2021

LONG BEACH, Calif. (KABC) – The good news is some kids are back in school and playing sports again. Unfortunately, local doctors are seeing a lot more injuries lately. The pandemic last year not only kept children away from school but also from their sports teams.

Noah Furlow, 13, never expected to have an operation at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach. Noah’s bad break came during his first flag football game of the season. His father Joe is the trainer.

“He did the exact technique I taught him. It was just unfortunate that there was a collision in the air and he fell on his wrist and broke his wrist pretty badly. It was pretty cruel,” said Joe Furlow .

The orthopedist Dr. Torin Cunningham noted a trend of increasing injuries as children go back to school and exercise.

“We are definitely seeing a lot more fractures lately,” said Dr. Cunningham. “In the past year there has been a lot of de-conditioning with no out-of-time exercise that went down and so the kids try to get back to the same level of participation, but they are out of shape and ready to do it. “

“Knowing they haven’t been active in 14 months, I really try to take it slow during our training, but the league we play in only gave us three weeks to settle down before our first game prepare, so they only had 4 1/2 hours of training, “said Joe Furlow.

This wasn’t Noah’s first injury. He broke his wrist while skateboarding last summer. This time he’s joking that he learned a thing or two from it.

“If I fall as high on the floor as possible from jumping, I probably won’t reach out my arm,” he said.

Mother Renae is already looking forward to the fall and says she believes Noah will be back in the field after rehab in August.

But Coach Joe believes injuries like this can be prevented and says, “We have to start training now for the fall, we have to get them back on the field … start conditioning them back to pre-COVID levels bring. “

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