Third-year DPT students Natalie Hosmer and Miles Moore's independent study, "Effects of Ball Size and Weight on Throwing Kinematics and Kinetics in Youth Baseball Athletes," was recently published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
In baseball, youth athletes play on smaller fields with shorter distances between bases, shorter pitching distances, and smaller mounds. Despite this, youth athletes use baseballs weighing the same amount as those used at the professional level, possibly predisposing youth baseball players to injuries. The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of throwing a smaller, lighter, and both smaller and lighter baseball on throwing arm stress in youth athletes and also to investigate how changing the ball size and weight would affect elbow varus torque, shoulder distraction force, and throwing arm internal rotation velocity during the throwing motion.