Contact sport

Contact sports are sports that emphasize or require physical contact between players. Some sports, such as mixed martial arts, are scored on impacting an opponent, while others, including rugby football, require tackling of players. These sports are often known as full-contact, as the sport cannot be undertaken without contact. Other sports have contact, but such events are illegal under the rules of the game or are accidental and do not form part of the sport.

The contact in contact sports can also include impact via a piece of sporting equipment, such as being struck by a hockey stick or football. Non-contact sports are those where participants should have no possible means of touching, such as sprinting, swimming, darts or snooker, where players use separate lanes or take turns of play. Consideration should also be given to other sports such as Moto-cross and Bicycle Moto-cross (BMX) and cycling which all involve riding/racing in packs of riders. This often results in brushing and bumping off other riders. It can additionally result in crashing, and possible head injury. Even though these riders wear helmets, head injuries can be serious.

Terminology in the United States

Current medical terminology in the United States uses the term collision sport to refer to sports like rugby, roller derby, American football, ice hockey, and lacrosse, the term contact sport to refer to sports such as soccer and basketball, and the term limited-contact sport to sports like squash and baseball.^[1] The American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement revised in 2008 included the following definitions:

In collision sports (eg, boxing, ice hockey, [American] football, lacrosse, and rodeo), athletes purposely hit or collide with each other or with inanimate objects (including the ground) with great force. In contact sports (eg, basketball and soccer), athletes routinely make contact with each other or inanimate objects but usually with less force than in collision sports. In limited-contact sports (eg, softball and squash), contact with other athletes or with inanimate objects is infrequent or inadvertent.^[1]

Injuries

Many sports will penalize contact with rules for certain situations or instances to help reduce the incidence of physical trauma or litigation for assault or grievous bodily harm. Many sports involve a degree of player-to-player or player-to-object contact. The term "contact sport" is used in both team sports and combat activities, medical terminology and television game shows, such as American Gladiators and Wipeout, to certain degrees. Contact between players is often classed by different grades ranging from non-contact, where there is no contact between players, to full-contact or collision sports, where the rules allow for significant physical contact.

Injuries in some contact sports have been fatal. Injury rates in professional rugby league are higher than in some other contact sports.^[2]

Equipment

As a result of the risk of injury, some sports require the use of protective equipment, for example American football protective equipment or the gloves and helmets needed for underwater hockey. Some sports are also played on soft ground and have padding on physical obstacles, such as goal posts.

Most contact sports require the male player to wear a Abdominal Guard to protect their male genitalia

The cost of equipment can be an obstacle to participating in many sports.

Trends

Because of issues involved with any sport that involves rapid contact, many sports governing bodies are changing their rules to decrease the incidence of serious injury. An example of this is the NFL banning concussed players from re-entering the same game in which they were injured in order to decrease further damage.

Grades

Full-contact

A (full) contact sport is any sport for which significant physical impact force on players, either deliberate or incidental, is allowed for within the rules of the game.

Contact actions include tackling, blocking and a whole range of other moves that can differ substantially in their rules and degree of application.

Examples of contact sports are roller derby, lacrosse, rugby league, rugby union, American football, muggle quidditch, water polo, kabaddi, handball, Australian rules football, and ice hockey. Full-contact martial arts include wrestling, sumo, boxing, mixed martial arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, judo, various forms of full contact karate, and some forms of Taekwondo.

Semi-contact

A semi-contact sport is typically a combat sport involving striking and containing physical contact between the combatants simulating full-power techniques. The techniques are restricted to limited power, and rendering the opponent unconscious is forbidden.

Some semi-contact sports use a point system to determine the winner and use extensive protective gear to protect the athletes from injury. Examples of semi-contact sports include karate, Kalaripayattu, kickboxing, various Chinese martial arts that incorporate contact rules sparring, and kendo.

Another indicator of a semi-contact martial arts competition system is that after a point is rewarded the adversaries will be separated and resume the match from safe distance, but often it is possible to argue if some martial arts sports belong in one contact group or another.

Limited-contact

Limited-contact sports are sports for which the rules are specifically designed to prevent contact between players either intentionally or unintentionally. Contact can still happen, but penalties are often used to disallow substantial contact between players. These penalties, including physically removing players from the field of play, mean that contact is moderate or rare.

Examples include football (soccer), baseball, softball, field hockey, women's lacrosse, basketball, netball, korfball, Gaelic football, hurling, shinty, polo, ultimate, bandy, and underwater hockey.

Non-contact sports

Non-contact sports are sports where participants compete alternately in lanes or are physically separated such as to make it nearly impossible for them to make contact during the course of a game without committing an out-of-bounds offense or, more likely, disqualification. Examples include volleyball, cricket, tennis, badminton, squash, golf, bowling, bowls, croquet, pool, snooker, darts, curling, bodybuilding, swimming, diving, running, sprinting, and gymnastics.

References