(upbeat music) - Soccer's a gateway sport, you don't really need any skill other than walking.

Any child would be able to, to score a goal.

So I think it's just a fun way to introduce sports and that environment.

For me personally, it's a part of my heart and soul.

Like it's why I exist.

(children shouting and screaming) - Growing up baseball was probably the one sport I spent the most time playing, but soccer was the one that I was the most naturally good at.

So when I broke my leg playing baseball, sports kind of dried up for me.

I kind of shifted to music and, you know, photography and stuff like that, until my senior year of high school when I started playing soccer again.

(gentle music) Yeeeeeaaah Fast forward to today, and soccer's the number one youth sport in America.

More kids play soccer than football, baseball, and softball combined.

And for good reason, honestly, all you need to get started is a ball in a field and you can just go around and kick around and have fun.

(muffled talking) But as the kids get older, it gets a lot more complicated.

It's not just the high school teams, like when I was a kid, now we got club teams and travel teams.

Although a lot of parents choose soccer over football and other sports because of low injury risk, it doesn't mean that there's not injury risks.

Concussions and knee injuries are big issues too.

Dorian and I love kicking a soccer ball around.

Get in the goal but we still need to get a little bit more information to figure out if this is a good fit.

So I talked to coaches, trainers, and doctors about the injury risks of soccer and the other pluses and minuses of what they call the beautiful game.

(muffled voices) - So there, there's gonna be contact for sure and different levels.

As you progress through, we'll have more contact and, and, and harder contact actually.

And, and so that's, you know, something to prepare our kids for, to know that that's part of the game is the contact aspect.

And so teaching our kids how to, how to contact correctly, how to prepare themselves for those contacts and you know, and how to take the, take the contact, you know, if you need to fall, that's important too.

I mean, growing up I mean it was so, it's almost like there were no rules, right in soccer it's like, you know, you get taken out, you know, by slide tackling or the headers or all these other things.

Like it didn't, didn't matter.

Like if you fell down, you know, you had about three seconds to get back up and get back into play.

There was no, you know, I'm not saying safety wasn't a concern back then, but I think it was more about the, the competitiveness in the sport back then to now where the focus really is about safety, more of our players and that, and it's a huge aspect that's changed our sport.

- [Mikey Damron] One of the main changes has to do with heading the ball, the primary cause of concussions in soccer.

And the younger the player, the more vulnerable they are - Somewhere between 10 and 12.

Anything younger than that, they shouldn't be trying to header the ball.

And part of it is the, you know, the skeletal maturity part of it too is the ability to understand where things are in space and time when the ball is coming your way.

- So we still limit the amount of time that we, we do focus on heading.

So I always wanna introduce the skill when, when they're able to receive it, and then make sure that they get the proper training.

But then we limit the amount of time that they actually do the training, especially on headers.

- [Mikey Damron] And just like in football, there's now strict concussion protocols for soccer.

A player who exhibits any sign of concussion could be on the sideline for weeks.

And there's actually a gender gap in concussions.

Concussion rates are higher for girls than boys in every high school sport.

A study found that girls that play high school soccer have almost the same risk for traumatic brain injuries than boys who play high school football.

This leads coaches to teach those techniques very carefully.

- So we teach them to make sure, especially for young women who seem to be a little bit more predisposed to concussions, we teach them to get firm in their upper body to be locked and loaded so that they can receive a ball on their head without having their head whipped back or whatever else.

- [Mikey Damron] As you can see, soccer has a lot of running, so lower body injuries are quite common.

- So when you are trying to run real quick and you shift, that can lead to, you know, injuries of the ACLs, which we see more commonly in, in female athletes, but definitely can happen in in boys as well.

But anatomy is a little bit different.

We also think there might be a component of like hormones.

And so we do tend to see, you know, there's different levers of severity of injuries, right?

So like season ending injuries.

The, for females, like one of the highest sports with season ending injuries is gymnastics for females, right?

Soccer, unfortunately for season ending injuries is like right below gymnastics.

And that probably is related to like knee injuries where they get an ACL tear and you know, you're probably gonna be out for the whole season.

- [Mikey Damron] Also, how does the conditions of the field affect injuries?

- Honestly, the major injuries that I come across as a coach are related to turf fields.

We've averaged an ACL tear every year since I've been here, and that's just due to the forgiveness of the field.

It's just not there anymore.

So when you plant your foot in a turf field and try to change direction, go the other way.

If your foot doesn't come with you, that ligament's gonna pop.

- [Mikey Damron] However, while the injury of risk is real, there is a real reason why soccer can be a great sport for kids, great for both their bodies and their minds.

- Soccer's hard man to get your brain to think about what your foot is doing, you know, is, is very difficult, you know, and then to, touch it, you know, with your foot.

And, you know, what's cool about soccer in my opinion is that every time you receive the ball, the situation's different.

So there's no plays like football or basketball.

You get the ball and where this defender is, was different from the last time.

And where your teammate is is different from the last time.

So you're always having to think.

- [Mikey Damron] Then there are benefits going beyond the field of play.

- So I think when you come to a sport to play that sport, it's much more than just a sport.

It's learning life lessons, it's doing all those types of things.

And soccer's a great sport to do that.

- Well, this hasn't changed at all, man.

Soccer will always hold a special place in my youth sports journey.

It was my gateway back into organized sports after a pretty catastrophic injury.

Dorian already loves to play the beautiful game and I have no idea how far it's gonna go with him, but I do know it'll be there for him if he wants it.