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Female athletes are 2 to 8 times more likely than male athletes to injure the anterior cruciate ligament during a noncontact athletic maneuver. Identifying anterior cruciate ligament injury risk factors in female athletes may help with the development of preventive training programs aimed at reducing injury rates.

Differences between genders in lower limb kinematics, kinetics, and neuromuscular patterns will be identified in an adolescent soccer population during an unanticipated side-cut maneuver.

Controlled laboratory study.

Forty-two elite adolescent soccer players (21 male and 21 female) performed an unanticipated side-cut maneuver, with the 3-dimensional kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic lower limb data being analyzed using principal component analysis.

The female athletes had higher gastrocnemius activity, normalized to maximal voluntary …