The purpose of this prospective study was to examine the injury characteristics in collegiate women’s lacrosse players. Injury data were collected from the Division I collegiate women’s lacrosse team for a 2-year. The total athlete-hours and athlete-exposures over the 2-year period were 27,621 and 13,437, respectively. The total number of injury was 309 injuries, and the total incidence rate was 11.19 injuries (95% confidence interval, 9.94 — 12.43) per 1000 athlete-hours and 23.00 injuries (20.43 — 25.56) per 1000 athlete-exposures, respectively. The most frequent location of injury was the ankle, followed by the knee and the thigh (20.1%, 14.6%, and 10.7% of all injuries). The proportion of lower extremity injuries accounted for 73.5% of all injuries. The most common types of injury was sprains and muscle cramps/spasms (24.9% and 24.6%, respectively). Overuse, contact (e.g., other players, the cross, and the ball), and non-contact injury was the 3 most common cause of injury (39.1%, 24.9%, and 17.2%, respectively). The primary injury characteristics of collegiate women’s lacrosse players were non-contact ankle sprain. Injury recurrence accounted for 26.1% of all injuries, and the most common period required for the player to return to practice and/or games was between 3 and 7 days. Midfield position player suffered the most number of injuries compared to other position player. An understanding of the injury characteristics of women’s lacrosse players may facilitate the development of the comprehensive strategy for injury prevention which is recommended by the sports medicine community.

To investigate the factors affecting the rate of improvement in endurance exercise performance following pre-cooling with ice slurry, we focused on individual physical characteristics and thermoregulatory capacity. Twenty-four healthy adults (12 males and 12 females) ingested 7.5g kg-1 of either ice slurry at -1°C (ICE) or control water at 20°C (CON) before cycling at 55% VO2max and continued cycling until the rectal temperature reached 38.5°C or untill exhaustion in a hot environment (controlled at 38°C, 40% relative humidity). The relationship between the rate of improvement in exercise performance and physical characteristics and thermoregulatory factors (changes in rectal temperature, the rate of rectal temperature increase, whole body sweat loss, mean metabolic heat production, and heat storage) was investigated. No correlation was noted between the rate of improvement in exercise performance and physical characteristics and heat storage. On the other hand, the rate of improvement in exercise performance showed significant correlations with changes in rectal temperature (r = -0.497), the rate of rectal temperature increases during exercise (r = -0.784), whole body sweat loss (r = 0.407), and mean metabolic heat production (r = -0.436). The rate of inhibition of sweating and the rate of increase in metabolic heat production by ice slurry ingestion during exercise have been suggested to be related to the rate of improvement in exercise performance. On the other hand, there was no relationship between body composition or VO2max and the rate of improvement in exercise performance.