Sidelined
Even the smallest athletes are susceptible to big injuries. At Overlook’s new Sunday Sports Injury Center, they’re treated like pros by a team of sports-medicine specialists.

By Alyson Black

It’s 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and all across suburban neighborhoods, parents are realizing that their school-age athletes might be a little worse for wear. The soccer goalie who threw himself across the net on Saturday morning is complaining that his elbow still hurts. The cheerleader who launched into the air with pep and energy—but came down in a tangle of arms and legs when her squadmates missed their marks—notices that her wrist is swollen. And the star quarterback who seemed fine after a hard hit in the last seconds of Friday night’s game is suddenly seeming not quite right.

It’s decision time: Do you drag your child to the Emergency Room? Do you take off from work for the next couple of days to shuttle your child between doctors’ visits and imaging tests? Or do you use a wait-and-see approach and hope for the best … wondering all the while if you’re missing something?

This fall, Atlantic Health presents a better solution: a walk-in Sports Injury Center, located in Overlook Hospital’s Medical Arts Center. Here, a multidisciplinary team of orthopedic, musculoskeletal, and concussion specialists, as well as physical therapists and sports-bracing specialists, will be on hand to diagnose and treat sports-related injuries in school-age athletes (elementary school through college)—and get them on the fast track to recovery.

“We’re taking care of a special population of patients,” says Joseph Rempson, MD, a leading member of the Sunday Sports Injury clinical staff and the co-director and co-founder of the Sports Concussion Center at Overlook. “We don’t want to see youngsters out of school or parents missing work. And a lot of times, kids don’t want to go to the Emergency Room, or don’t necessarily have the type of problem that requires that type of care. The Sunday clinics are designed to offer accessible, specialized care.”

A Community of Responsiveness

If the Sports Injury Center sounds too good to be true, consider that the Atlantic Health program is modeled after programs in the South, where high-school and college football programs energize and band together entire communities. The idea traveled north via orthopedic surgeon Clifford Schob, MD, who, in the late eighties, completed his sports-medicine fellowship in Birmingham, Alabama, under famed surgeon James Andrews, MD. (Andrews operated on Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang this summer, and is the founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute, the senior orthopedic consultant for the NFL’s Washington Redskins, and the medical director for Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, as well as co–medical director of the LPGA.) Says Schob, “Down South, the SEC is bigger than the NFL, and high-school football is king on Friday nights—we offered sports-medicine centers right after the games. They provide instant access for kids who are hurt that evening.” During a department meeting earlier this year, when the question was asked, “What can we do to provide better sports-medicine services to the community?”, Schob drew on what he had seen in Birmingham. (A program similar to Overlook’s has been held at North Carolina’s Duke University for years.) The idea, he says, was immediately well received by the hospital: “It’s all about a community of responsiveness.”

Indeed, “community” and “responsiveness” are two of the program’s stand-out assets. Participating physicians represent a wide range of areas, including Summit, Short Hills, Westfield, Watchung, Millburn, Berkeley Heights, Basking Ridge, Morristown, and Union, as well as Parsippany, Newark, Bayonne, Warren, Randolph, and Sparta. “We’re catering to our strengths and using our geography,” says Rempson. “If you come here from Clark and require follow-up treatment, we’ll refer you to the team member in Clark. We’re making follow-up care as convenient as possible.”

Quality Care

The Sunday Sports Injury Center is equipped to deal with a broad range of complaints, including common musculoskeletal injuries (pulled muscle, ACL problem, torn meniscus, jammed finger, torn rotator cuff, etc.), as well as lacerations, abrasions, and concussions. X-rays are readily available, as are bracing and splinting services. “The clinic is geared for the athlete who was injured in his or her weekend game,” says Michele Gilsenan, DO, program director of the Overlook Hospital Sports Medicine Fellowship and president of the American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine. “If an injury occurred on Friday night or Saturday, to expedite the evaluation with a specialist is beneficial.” Gilsenan, the head team physician for Kean University in Union, also points out that patients at the Sports Injury Center will avoid the long wait times often encountered in Emergency Rooms. “The E.R. doctors and primary-care doctors might refer the patient to the sports-medicine specialist anyway,” she says, “so a step is omitted.”

Concussion Care

If your child sustains a blow to the head during a game, don’t rule out a concussion—a mild form of traumatic brain injury—even if he or she seems fine immediately afterward. “Concussions can be misleading,” Rempson cautions. “Sometimes symptoms don’t manifest right away. A kid takes a hit, has a little bit of a headache, and seems to have recovered perfectly fine. But then over the next three days, things could snowball.”

Because timely concussion care is so critical—and because the needs of concussed patients are often very different than those of patients with other injuries—concussion patients at the Sunday Sports Injury Center will be seen by appointment only. Parents can call that morning to check on availability, but most patients will be referred to the Sunday sessions from the Sports Concussion Center at Overlook. “We want concussion patients to come in at a specific time, rather than sitting for two hours in the Emergency Room—that’s not in their best interests,” says Rempson. “We don’t want to have ten youngsters with concussions sitting around the center, either. The lights bother them, noises bother them, people coming in bother them.”

While physicians at the Sports Injury Center certainly are prepared to diagnose concussions, their greatest asset will be in evaluating follow-up conditions to assess whether a patient is ready to return to his or her normal activities. “The danger in sending kids back to activity too early is severe,” Rempson warns. “Getting hit while you’re concussed can lead to symptoms that last indefinitely.

“Our goal—always—is to get awareness out to parents,” he continues. “We want to help people live active, healthy lifestyles. And that’s exactly what these Sunday morning sessions are going to do.”

For a referral to a sports-medicine physician, call (888) 519-8565. For more information on the Atlantic Health Sports Injury Center, call (888) 393-6049.

Avoiding Injury
What’s better than treating an injury? Avoiding it entirely. Here’s how.

“One of the things we’ve learned from managing injuries is that we should take our core of knowledge and apply it to the person who hasn’t been injured yet,” says orthopedic surgeon Clifford Schob, MD. “If you properly train an athlete and apply some teaching, you can actually prevent an injury from happening.”

Schob can’t stress enough the importance of community-wide education when it comes to young athletes. “There is a lot of pressure on kids, from multiple angles,” he says. “Kids have a lot of energy. They need supervision. They don’t know when they’re overdoing it. Even if their shoulder is hurting them, they’re not necessarily going to go to the coach to say something. They want to play! There needs to be someone in an adult supervisory role to step in and oversee responsibility.”

To that end, specific attention should be paid to each child’s needs. A kid who pitches for the baseball team, for example, should be instructed to do rotator-cuff exercises. They should be educated on pitch counts, and should limit the number of months spent pitching rather than engage in the activity year-round.

“It’s easy to talk to a kid when he comes in with a shoulder problem,” Schob admits, “but even before he comes in, it’s important to be involved in the community with these messages.”

To avoid injury, follow these suggestions.

• Be properly conditioned. Engage in cross-training to improve aerobic tolerance and build up multiple areas of the body.


• Engage in core stretching exercises and agility training.


• Avoid enduring acts while you are injured.


• Learn to land properly, with the center of gravity over both knees.


• Follow a healthy diet and remain hydrated.


• Wear proper footwear and well-fitting sporting equipment.


• Have a pre-participation physical.