Injury Rate in TackleBar Football

Joseph Toninato; Tim Healy; Uzma Samadani; Eric Christianson

doi:10.1177/2325967119874065

Injury Rate in TackleBar Football

Orthop J Sports Med. 2019 Oct 9;7(10):2325967119874065. doi: 10.1177/2325967119874065. eCollection 2019 Oct.

Authors

Joseph Toninato¹, Tim Healy², Uzma Samadani^{3

4

5

6}, Eric Christianson⁷

Affiliations

¹ Research & Development, UnitedHealth Group, Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA.
² TackleBar, Long Lake, Minnesota, USA.
³ Department of Neurosurgery, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
⁴ Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
⁵ CentraCare Health, St Cloud, Minnesota, USA.
⁶ Division of Neurosurgery, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
⁷ Emergency Services, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Abstract

Background: As football comes under greater scrutiny because of concussions and other injuries, many people are searching for safer alternatives, especially for youth athletes. The injury rate in TackleBar football, one such alternative, is not currently known.

Purpose: To describe TackleBar football and calculate its injury rate over a single season to compare it with both traditional tackle and flag football.

Study design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods: TackleBar football was described, and injuries of male athletes (age range, 9-14 years) participating in TackleBar football were tracked over the course of a season (August 5 through October 27, 2018) and compared with published injury rates for traditional tackle and flag football.

Results: The overall injury rate of TackleBar football was found to be 0.31 per 1000 athlete-exposures (AEs), which is lower than youth tackle (2.25-2.60/1000 AEs) and flag (5.77/1000 AEs) football.

Conclusion: TackleBar football may represent a reasonable alternative to tackle and flag football with regard to injuries.

Keywords: concussion; football; injury; youth.