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University Daily Kansan, October 7, 1980
2024-08-17 13:59:34
Game of volleyball, not players, invites injuries
By KEVIN BERTELS Sports Writer
Shelly Fox and Jill Stinson avoid a collision duri Volleyball is a sport that invites injuries from djv Injuries to fingers from blocking and floor bursts a hardwood foot are commonplace for volleyball pla
In volleyball, it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you can play the best.
Few sports offer the opportunities for injuries that volleyball does. When six players are crowded into a 30-by 30-foot square and when the nature of the game calls for diving on a hardwood floor or blocking at close range a ball being hit as hard as possible, injuries are almost invited.
But not by KU coach Bob Lockwood and his volleyball team. Though the game may invite injuries, it is also one of the few sports that requires coaching to avoid injuries. Certainly no one can imagine a basketball coach telling his team to slow down so they won't get hurt. By the same token, volleyball coaches ask for aggressiveness but teach techniques for safety.
Take, for example, one of the more obvious actions on a volleyball court that could cause injury—the dive. To the spectator, diving headlong to the floor appears to be the most dangerous move possible.
To the volleyball player, the move has become natural through training and repetition. Tina Wilson, a senior on the team, said yesterday that she had to
As the trainer, she knows that is not always achieved.
"They sometimes get burns on their hips, she said. "As far as stomach and chest go, they don't get hurt. But they can bump bones once in a while."
"THE IDEA IS for them to start out slow and put most of the weight on their chest and stomach and arch their back into the floor, " Bulmer said.
Knowing how to fall includes keeping the hips and knees on the floor, not always easy or possible, because they protrude further than the rest of the body. The exception is that bruises are the result of dives, and they can be seen on every ball player.
After many bruises and floor burns, the proper technique for diving onto a hardwood floor is perfected. But then a ball is hit hard and all the newly learned techniques are flung away and an all-out dive is the only answer. Skin and bones hit the floor at the same time, and both the crowd and the player know it was not proper technique, according to KU team trainer Renea Bulmer.
its components," she said. "It can be part of parts. Then you have to practice these."
"Every once in a while you hear the
talk of your favorite music, usually
they hope how to fall," she said.
Patronize Kansan
"Things such as net violations cause injuries, when one girl lands on the foot of a girl on the other side of the net." Lockwood said. "We stress that girls should never go under the net. In practice, there are a lot of balls around. We make it policy that the girls yell 'ball' and not jump until the ball is moved. Those kind of things you can be alert for and do from day-to-day."
Most volleyball injuries come from players landing on something besides the flat part of the foot against the flat floor. Whether it is a ball, someone touching you or another player, chances are good that what goes up won't land where it started.
"Volleyball is so much diving or rolling," she said. "If you don't dive right, you cut your chin open. I don't think there is a girl on our team who splits it her chin open. Eventually your body begins to adjust to the way to dive."
more finger injuries this year," Bulmer said. "You've got a girl spiking as hard as she can and you get a finger bent back too far."
But other things can cause injuries. A very common injury in volleyball is the finger sprain; volleyball's version of the jammed finger. The strain often occurs when girls are blocking spikes at the net. The ball bends the finger back a
cording to Diane Schroeder, a senior on the team.
Schroeder, who leads the team in warm-ups, and who helped Lockwood design the warm-up routine, says that they are indispensable. That is important—they are indispensable.
THE DIVE IS the most obvious on-court malicious mall, but the most dangerous is the hook.
"CONCERNING INJURIES, it's top of the list," Schroeder said. "Every injury that I can spot, if it isn't a freak accident, happened from not rotating the ankle or the knee or something. I think because of the physical difference, girls need to stretch more than guys."
"You use your shoulder for everything in volleyball." Lockwood said.
While serving, volleying and spiking, and in the midst of any number of situations that could cause injury, one reason that it was easy to develop fear, also.
One particular injury that hinges directly on stretching is tendinitis. The quick action of serving can wear on the shoulder, and often servers develop tendinitis, much like pitchers develop sore shoulders.
But from the first referee's whistle to the end of the match, fear must be put in the back of players minds, because volleyball is a game of seconds, and
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