Sports injuries pose financial threat to teens, families

By Caleb Lenn and Michael Pewett

April 16, 2026

Youthcast Media Group®

Miah Henderson, a sophomore at Annandale High School in Annandale, Va., suffered a fractured back and ankle at a gymnastics meet.  The cost was staggering. 

Miah Henderson (courtesy of Henderson).

“Luckily, insurance covered it,” Henderson said.

Others are not so lucky. Sophomore Annandale basketball player Samuel Greene worries about getting reinjured. “Injuries can be very expensive, and I’ve already injured myself and experienced the staggering medical prices,” Greene said. 

Millions of people suffer from injuries they cannot afford every year. Without insurance, medical costs can spiral for parents and students, which is why Fairfax County requires student athletes to have adequate insurance before participating in school sports.

High school athletic trainer Samantha Dickie says the school-provided K&K insurance, which is $20 per student, is not the best. 

“You have to have insurance to play sports at Annandale, but it’s unfortunate, because it does not cover a majority of injuries, in the sense that it does not cover the most extreme injuries, as opposed to your everyday ankle sprain that you need to get an x-ray for,” she said. 

That can lead to problems for students with more serious injuries, Dickie said.  “Some of the biggest issues are that insurance doesn't cover unnecessary surgeries, and that can cause a lot of wait times for MRIs and surgeries especially for ACLs, which can delay recovery and return to school.”

Allison Liefeld Fillar, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist who practices in Maryland, says the most common sports injury is repetitive stress injuries. 

“The most common teen injury I see is actually not related to a single injury but is instead due to overuse injuries causing tendinitis or growth plate irritation,” she said. 

Samuel Greene has already been injured while playing sports before and is worried about what another injury would do, financially and physically (courtesy of Greene).

Millions of people around the country suffer from sports injuries and are not able to cover these injuries without insurance. While insurance is expensive, it has the potential to save you thousands of dollars. 

“Insurance reliably authorizes evaluation and treatment of sports injuries,” Fillar said. “Sometimes, we do get insurance denials but we then reach out directly to the insurance companies to get treatment authorized through a peer review process.”

Research by Yale Economics professor, Ray Fair,  found that for college, the estimated medical cost per year for injuries in contact sports ranges from $446 million to $1.5 billion; for high school, the range is $5.4 billion to $19.2 billion. And these are only the short-term costs; the long-term costs may be much higher.

As a teenager, it can be hard to understand the financial burden that an injury can put on the family. One of the most common sports injuries, an ACL tear, can cost anywhere from $5,000-$20,000 dollars for surgery, with coverage depending on your insurance. In the case of families already struggling with rent, car payments and other expenses, an uninsured injury can be a huge burden, sending them deeper into a downward financial spiral.

Caleb Lenn and Michael Pewett are sophomores at Annandale High School, one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism classroom partners.