Volleyball injury statistics vary substantially by age group, competition level, and the way an exposure is measured. Across the studies summarized here, ankle and knee injuries recur most often, while rates range from 1.11 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures in one high school surveillance period to 7.07 per 1,000 athlete-exposures in NCAA women’s volleyball during 2013–2015. The figures below identify the study population and period so that unlike measurements are not treated as interchangeable.
Table of contents
- Key volleyball injury rates
- NCAA volleyball injuries
- Body parts and injury types
- High school girls’ volleyball surveillance
- How injuries happen
- College and high school comparisons
Key volleyball injury rates
The clearest way to compare the available figures is to keep the denominator visible. An athlete-exposure, often abbreviated AE, represents one athlete participating in one practice or competition. The studies below do not all use the same population or reporting system, so their rates describe specific settings rather than a single universal volleyball risk.
| Population and measurement period | Injuries or rate | Reported rate |
|---|---|---|
| NCAA men’s volleyball, 2013–2014 to 2014–2015 | 83 injuries | 4.69 per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
| NCAA women’s volleyball, 2013–2014 to 2014–2015 | 510 injuries | 7.07 per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
| NCAA women’s volleyball, 2014–2015 to 2018–2019 | — | 6.73 per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
| U.S. high school girls’ volleyball, 2005–2006 to 2013–2014 | — | 1.11 per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
| U.S. high school girls’ volleyball, 2021–2022 | 196 injuries | 1.6 per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
The rates should not be read as a time trend. They come from different reports, surveillance systems, and periods. The 2021–2022 high school figure is a later snapshot than the 2005–2014 surveillance figure, while the NCAA five-season estimate covers a different competitive population.
NCAA volleyball injuries
The study titled Descriptive Epidemiology of Injuries Sustained in NCAA Men’s and Women’s Volleyball, 2013–2014 to 2014–2015 included 18,844 NCAA volleyball players in the 2014–2015 academic year. During the study period, NCAA men’s volleyball reported 83 injuries and NCAA women’s volleyball reported 510 injuries.
The injury rate was 4.69 per 1,000 athlete-exposures for men and 7.07 per 1,000 athlete-exposures for women. The women’s rate was reported as 1.51 times the men’s rate, with an injury rate ratio of 1.51. Because the counts and rates refer to NCAA volleyball in that study period, they should not be generalized to recreational players or to all volleyball programs.
The later study Epidemiology of Injuries in NCAA Women’s Volleyball: 2014–2015 Through 2018–2019 reported an NCAA women’s volleyball injury rate of 6.73 per 1,000 athlete-exposures across the five-season period. That value is close to, but not identical to, the 7.07 per 1,000 athlete-exposures reported for women’s volleyball in the earlier study. The measurement windows differ, which is one reason both figures should be retained rather than combined.
Time loss also changes what a body-part percentage means. In the 2013–2014 to 2014–2015 NCAA study, the ankle was the most commonly injured body part among time-loss injuries for both men and women. It represented 25.8% of men’s time-loss injuries and 24.3% of women’s. Among non-time-loss injuries, the knee was the most common body part: 25.5% for men and 16.3% for women.
The same study found that sprains represented 25.8% of men’s time-loss injuries and 31.2% of women’s time-loss injuries. Concussions represented 19.4% of men’s time-loss injuries and 14.8% of women’s. These are shares within the time-loss category, not percentages of every injury recorded in the study.
Body parts and injury types
The five-season NCAA women’s report provides a broader distribution across all injuries. Knee injuries made up 14.6% of all NCAA women’s volleyball injuries from 2014–2015 through 2018–2019. Ankle injuries accounted for 13.8%, followed by trunk injuries at 10.7%, shoulder injuries at 10.4%, and head or face injuries at 9.4%.
Shoulder findings add detail beyond the body-part total. Of NCAA women’s volleyball shoulder injuries in that five-season report, 50.9% were inflammatory conditions or impingement/entrapment. That percentage describes the composition of shoulder injuries, not the share of all volleyball injuries caused by those conditions.
The pattern in high school girls’ volleyball is similarly concentrated in the lower extremity, although the reported percentages depend on the study design and injury definition. In Incidence and Risk Factors for Injuries in Girls’ High School Volleyball: A Study of 2072 Players, the ankle accounted for 28% of time-loss injuries, the knee for 14%, and the shoulder for 11%.
The study also reported an injury-rate ratio of 1.11 for age and the rate of any injury, meaning that the reported injury rate increased with age in that study population. Contact injuries were most often attributed to the ball, at 45.3%, or to a teammate, at 25.9%.
High school girls’ volleyball surveillance
The report The First Decade of Web-Based Sports Injury Surveillance: Descriptive Epidemiology of Injuries in US High School Girls’ Volleyball covered the 2005–2006 through 2013–2014 surveillance period. It reported a total injury rate of 1.11 per 1,000 athlete-exposures, with a competition rate of 1.06 and a practice rate of 1.15 per 1,000 athlete-exposures.
Ankle injuries represented 37.4% of practice injuries and 34.9% of competition injuries. Knee injuries represented 10.2% of practice injuries and 13.0% of competition injuries. These figures show why separating practice and competition matters: the body-part distribution was not identical across the two settings.
The later SUMMARY REPORT for high school girls’ volleyball in 2021–2022 recorded 196 injuries from 119,235 exposures. The overall injury rate was 1.6 per 1,000 athlete-exposures. Competition accounted for 84 injuries over 43,691 exposures, a rate of 1.9 per 1,000 athlete-exposures. Practice accounted for 112 injuries over 75,544 exposures, a rate of 1.5 per 1,000 athlete-exposures.
The 2021–2022 report also described injury characteristics by anatomical region. Concussions made up 80.8% of head, face, and neck injuries. Sprains and strains represented 85.6% of lower-extremity injuries, 78.6% of upper-extremity injuries, and 67.8% of trunk injuries. These percentages are conditional on the body-region category and should not be interpreted as shares of all injuries.
How injuries happen
Mechanism data show several ways a volleyball injury can occur. In the 2005–2006 through 2013–2014 high school surveillance report, no-contact mechanisms caused 36.5% of practice injuries and 35.8% of competition injuries. Contact with another person caused 14.7% of practice injuries and 25.2% of competition injuries. Contact with the playing surface caused 11.3% of practice injuries and 17.7% of competition injuries.
The later 2021–2022 SUMMARY REPORT grouped injuries by volleyball action. Blocking accounted for 30.5% of all injuries by mechanism, passing for 14.3%, and digging for 12.8%. Passing was especially prominent among concussions: 41.7% of all concussions were caused by passing in that report.
The NCAA women’s volleyball report for 2014–2015 through 2018–2019 classified 26.1% of injuries as overuse and 22.7% as noncontact. Those categories are not direct substitutes for the high school action categories, because the reports use different classification approaches. They are best used to describe the NCAA women’s surveillance population on its own terms.
College and high school comparisons
The study A Comparison of Women’s Collegiate and Girls’ High School Volleyball Injury Data Collected Prospectively Over a 4-Year Period compared data from 2004–2005 through 2008–2009. Girls’ high school volleyball recorded 792 time-loss injuries over 637,786 athlete-exposures, corresponding to 12.4 injuries per 10,000 athlete-exposures. Women’s collegiate volleyball recorded 1,380 injuries over 339,753 exposures, corresponding to 40.6 injuries per 10,000 exposures.
In that comparison, the college volleyball injury rate was 3.3 times the high school rate. The college competition injury rate was 2.9 times the high school rate, while the college practice injury rate was 3.5 times the high school rate.
Those comparisons are specific to the 2004–2005 through 2008–2009 data and the study’s definitions. They should not be combined mathematically with the later high school surveillance figures or with NCAA rates reported per 1,000 athlete-exposures. A rate of 40.6 per 10,000 exposures is a different presentation from 4.06 per 1,000 exposures, even when the underlying quantity is converted; the source population and study period still remain essential.
Taken together, the available statistics point to a consistent set of questions for interpreting volleyball injury data: which athletes were observed, whether the injury caused time loss, whether the exposure occurred in practice or competition, and how the report defined mechanism and body region. Without those details, a percentage such as 28% for ankle time-loss injuries or a rate such as 1.6 per 1,000 athlete-exposures can easily be applied to the wrong volleyball population.