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The Silent Epidemic in Women’s Sports: ACL Injuries and How to Prevent Them

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“Injury timeout on the floor!” The words thundered from the arena’s speakers as a Boston College player lay on the court, clutching her leg in pain. Hannah Berg, the athletic trainer for BC women’s basketball team from Melrose, Massachusetts, stares at the injured athlete with a sick feeling in the pit in her stomach. The player had gone down after making a move towards the basketball without any contact from the defender.

“That’s when you know,” said Berg. “Your gut just flips and you’re like, ‘Well, shit.’”

Her experience as an athletic trainer at Kent State, Fort Lewis College, and the University of New Hampshire has taught her to recognize a possible ACL tear right away. 

“[When] you’ve seen so many,” said Berg, “you just get this gut feeling that it isn’t good… You never know for sure, but you start planning your next steps.”

This injury affects athletes across most sports, however, female athletes are particularly susceptible to tearing their ACLs, especially in basketball. According to a 2016 article in the Journal of Orthopaedics, female basketball players experience ACL tears three and a half times more often than their male counterparts.

“It’s been a trend for a long time,” said Berg. “You would hope that with advances in women’s sports, you would see less and less tears… Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not really getting better yet.”

(Photo: John Sexton)

The ACL is a band of tissue in the center of the knee that connects the femur (thigh bone) to the tibia (shin bone). The tissue creates stability in a person’s knee, allowing him or her to pivot or rotate without feeling like the knee is giving out. 

“If you’re an elite athlete,” said Berg, “it can be very challenging to do rotational or cutting movement (with a torn) ACL.”

As for why this injury occurs more commonly among female athletes, Berg believes it is a mix of anatomy and education.

“I think the biggest component to it is actually education and training,” said Berg. “You have young girls who are predisposed to being more prone to having an ACL tear by how their body alignment is.”

Berg explained that women generally have wider hips compared to men, and their knees tend to tilt inward. This alignment changes the positioning of the knee joint, raising the risk of ACL injuries during actions like jumping, pivoting and landing. 

“A huge reason why you see non-contact ACL injuries,” said Berg, “is from a plant and a kid’s knee caving in on some rotational movement that their body can’t keep up with.”

She believes that the key to minimizing the chance of a tear is preventative training when athletes are young.

“I would have kids doing a lot of strength training,” said Berg, “a lot of learning how to jump, how to squat, how to land. Unfortunately, we do not teach girls that stuff young enough. There’s still a gap between teaching young girls and boys about sports, and you have girls falling behind in terms of proper mechanical training.”

(Photo: John Sexton)

At BC, Berg and strength and conditioning coach Brandon Sanders commit to teaching their players, especially those who have suffered tears before, the proper techniques so that they can avoid injury.

“If I get a kid that has an ACL tear, they spend almost nine to 12 months with me,” said Berg. “We break it back down to the beginning when it comes to the stages of jumping, running and cutting. For example, with jumping, we’re going to jump, and you have to land correctly almost every single time. We talk about soft landings and bent knees and never doing anything with a straight leg.”

The issue with teaching college players these skills is that it may be too late in life for elite athletes to change their mechanics.

“By the time they get to me in college,” said Berg, “it’s almost a little too late. Can you imagine breaking someone of a habit they’ve had for 12 or 15 years? It’s really hard, especially when they’ve made it this far.”

The challenge is not just fixing movement patterns at the college level. It is preventing them from developing in the first place. ACL tear-prevention training for girls needs to occur earlier in their athletic careers.

“I think that if you were a high school coach,” said Berg, “in the most ideal setting, you would designate 10 to 20 minutes, three times a week for an ACL prevention program, which is learning how to jump, learning how to cut, learning how to run and accelerate properly, and decelerate.”

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1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Cathy Blaney

    October 26, 2025 at 7:13 pm

    Super important for you female athletes and their coaches to read – should be required reading!!

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Basketball

Boston College lands one of nation’s top rebounders in Brandon Benjamin, along with former Charleston forward Colby Duggan

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Boston College received two more transfer commitments this weekend in Brandon Benjamin and Colby Duggan. Benjamin and Duggan join Money Williams, Ernest Shelton and JB Frankel as the fourth and fifth transfers to commit to Luke Murray and BC this offseason. The Eagles now have seven players on their roster, including international signing Zak Smrekar and Jack Bailey, the only BC player from last year not to enter the portal.

Benjamin, a 6-foot-8 forward from Newark, N.J., played his only collegiate season last year at Fairfield University. The rising sophomore was named to the 2025-26 MAAC All-Rookie Team and All-MAAC Second Team after averaging 14.2 points, 10.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks while shooting 56.5% from the field. Benjamin ranked first in the MAAC and eighth in the country in rebounds per game and second in the country in offensive rebounds per game (4.25).

“What made me pick BC first was the coaching staff,” Benjamin told ZAGSBLOG on Sunday. “It really felt like family. I will bring my high motor, plus rebounding, finishing around the rim and taking guys off the dribble. [I also bring] my catch-and-shooting, pick-and-pop, my winning impact and my versatility with guarding 1-5 with the ability to block shots.”

Duggan, a 6-foot-7 forward from Monson, Mass., averaged 9.3 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 19 games for Charleston last season after missing the first part of the year with an injury. He spent the previous two seasons at Campbell University and averaged 15.7 points and 3.3 rebounds on 34% shooting from 3-point range during the 2024-25 season.

“He competes on both ends of the court at all times,” former Charleston head coach and current USF head coach Chris Mack said. “He’s a warrior. He’s a winner. Defensively, Colby doesn’t back down. He guards well in the post and on the perimeter. Offensively, he led the conference in scoring and is just scratching the surface of what he can be as a mismatch.”

Benjamin should slot into the starting lineup as the power forward or a small-ball big thanks to his impressive rebounding ability, while Duggan comes to BC as a depth piece off the bench.

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Former Merrimack sharpshooter Ernest Shelton commits to Boston College

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Guard Ernest Shelton announced his commitment to Boston College early Thursday night. The former Merrimack Warrior became the fourth transfer to commit to head coach Luke Murray and the Eagles, joining Zak Smrekar, Money Williams and JB Frankel. Shelton was named to the 2025-26 All-MAAC first team while helping lead the Warriors to a MAAC regular-season championship.

Shelton played two seasons at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the opposite side of the state from his hometown of Philadelphia, before transferring to Merrimack last offseason. The 6-foot-5 guard averaged 15.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals while shooting 34.6% from behind the 3-point line.

“[Shelton]’s a shooter,” Merrimack head coach Joe Gallo said. “Every time it comes out of his hand, you think it’s going in.”

Shelton knocked down 99 3-pointers for Merrimack last season and was among the top 40 in the country in 3-pointers made per game (2.9). He set a career high last season with nine 3-pointers in a game against Boston University and made five or more 3-pointers in six games.

The sharpshooter is a breath of fresh air for a Boston College program that finished last in the ACC in 3-point percentage last season.


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Boston College lands Zak Smrekar, Money Williams, and JB Frankel, first three transfer commitments of Luke Murray era

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Boston College received its first three transfer commitments of the 2026 transfer portal cycle on Thursday in Zak Smrekar, Money Williams, and JB Frankel. Smrekar, Williams, and Frankel are the first three players to commit to BC since Luke Murray was named head coach on March 26 and join Jack Bailey as the only three players currently on the Eagles’ roster.

Smrekar is a 19-year-old, 6-foot-7 guard from Slovenia and was the first to commit to Murray. He played for the club Krka Novo Mesto in the Slovenian ABA for three seasons and averaged 9.8 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 15 games in the 2025-26 season. Smrekar also played for Slovenia in the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup and averaged 16.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists in seven games.

Williams is a 20-year-old, 6-foot-4 guard who played the last three seasons for Montana. The Oakland, California, native was named to the 2025-26 All-Big Sky First Team after averaging 20.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game on 49.8% shooting from the field. Williams scored a career-high 40 points against Northern Colorado in the Big Sky Tournament, along with tallying six other 30-point games last season.

“I can’t come up with enough words to praise Money Williams properly,” Montana head coach Travis DeCuire said in October 2025. “When you talk about the young man that he is off the court, the young man he is when you bring him in the office, and you have real conversations with him and look him in the eye and talk about things that are hard to talk about.”

Frankel is a 21-year-old, 6-foot-3 guard who is not moving far, as he played the last three years at Northeastern. He started 13 of 30 games for the Huskies last season and averaged 5.9 points, 2 rebounds, and 1.9 assists. The New York City native scored a season-high 13 points in a road win against Harvard.

Coach Murray will have to continue to build up the Eagles roster, but with three guards being picked up, look for the Eagles to hone in on finding their starting forwards and big men.

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