Mount Notre Dame breaks from its pre-game huddle and takes the field against McAuley on April 21.
(Photo: Adam Baum/Community Press)

A new survey came out regarding high school and college sports and concussions and while football remains the most likely sport an athlete will sustain a concussion from, the No. 2 sport, women’s lacrosse, was a bit of a surprise.

In previous studies, women’s lacrosse had generally been No. 5 on the list behind football, men’s and women’s soccer and men’s lacrosse.

The study, authored by Stephen W Marshall, Kevin M Guskiewicz, Viswanathan Shankar, Michael McCrea and Robert C Cantu in Injury Epidemiology, looked at the incident rate of concussions in seven sports, including lacrosse, which is considered the fastest-growing sport at the high school level.

In football, the two positions most likely to sustain concussions were quarterbacks and running backs. In women’s lacrosse, where there is supposed to be less contact than men’s lacrosse, defenders were the most likely positions to sustain concussions.

After women’s lacrosse, the sport with the next highest rate of concussion was men’s lacrosse, followed by men’s soccer and then women’s soccer. Though the report looked at ice hockey, the small sample number of players meant there were too few concussions to quantify incidence rate in ice hockey, the authors said.

Ironically, the safest position in lacrosse for concussions was goalkeeper, the same position that earned the highest rate of concussions in both men’s and women’s soccer.

Another interesting note: While player collisions were considered the most likely cause of concussions in football, men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s soccer, the most likely reason a lacrosse player sustained a concussion was from contact with another player’s stick or the ball.