Publication date: Jun 28, 2026
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women’s sport programs feature elite-level athletes operating under high-performance demands. We describe the epidemiology of injuries in NCAA women’s sports during 2019/20-2021/22. We characterized injury frequencies and distributions by sport, event type, body part, diagnosis, and mechanism of injury. Using a Bayesian negative binomial modeling framework, we estimated injury incidence rates and evaluated differential incidence across sport, event type, NCAA division, and academic year. A total of 10,417 injuries were reported across the study period; injuries to the lower leg and foot accounted for 29. 6% of all injuries. The posterior mean overall injury rate was 5. 2 per 1,000 AEs (95% CrI: [4. 7, 5. 3]), and overall injury incidence was estimated to be highest in gymnastics (posterior mean rate = 7. 9; 95% CrI: [3. 8, 14. 1]). Our results indicate that the nature of injuries sustained by NCAA women athletes remains tethered to sport-specific gameplay dynamics.
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Ncaa | Bayesian methods |
| Pandemic | Epidemiology |
| Women | injury surveillance |
| sport-related injuries |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | Injury |
| disease | MESH | COVID-19 pandemic |