Concussions in 'Safe' Sports: Why Tennis, Swim, Cheer, and Track Parents Need Baseline Tests Too

When parents think about concussions, they picture football helmets colliding. They don’t picture their daughter at a swim meet, their son on a tennis court, or their child at cheer practice. But concussions happen in every sport — and the athletes in “safe” sports are often the least prepared when they do.

The numbers are surprising

According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, cheerleading accounts for more than half of all catastrophic injuries among female high school and college athletes. Flyers fall from height. Bases get kicked in the head. Tumbling produces ground-impact concussions. The state of New Jersey now explicitly includes cheerleading in its youth concussion law. Yet many cheer programs don’t offer baseline testing because they don’t consider themselves a “contact sport.”

Gymnastics produces concussions from falls off apparatus, failed dismounts, and collisions during floor exercises. Data from the NCAA Injury Surveillance System shows that gymnastics has a meaningful concussion rate, particularly on vault and balance beam events. Swimming and diving athletes hit their heads on pool walls, diving boards, and pool bottoms — a 2019 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine documented concussion cases across aquatic sports. Track and field athletes collide during relay handoffs, trip over hurdles, and get struck by thrown implements (shot put, discus, javelin). Tennis players get hit in the head by serves traveling over 100 mph.

The problem: nobody expects them

The problem with “safe sport” concussions is that nobody expects them. When a football player takes a hit and reports a headache, the athletic trainer starts a concussion protocol. When a swimmer hits their head on the wall during a flip turn and feels dizzy, they often just sit out a few laps and get back in the pool. No protocol. No evaluation. No baseline to compare against.

Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms that falls — not sports collisions — are the leading cause of concussions overall. This means any physically active person, in any activity, faces concussion risk.

The case for universal baseline testing

This is why baseline testing shouldn’t be limited to collision sports. Any athlete who could potentially sustain a head impact — which is effectively every athlete — benefits from having a record of their healthy brain function. The concussion itself isn’t less serious because it happened in a “safe” sport. The brain doesn’t know or care what activity caused the injury.

At Headquarters, we baseline athletes across all sports. If your child is physically active, a baseline is worth having. Contact us to set up testing for your athlete or your team — regardless of sport. For more context on the scope of the problem, see our club sports concussion gap piece.

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