INDIANAPOLIS—The NCAA is presenting its second annual Scholarly Colloquium on College Sports, in conjunction with the 2009 NCAA Convention.  

The event, scheduled for Jan. 13-14 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center near Washington, D.C., is titled “Paying the Price: Is Excellence in Sport Compatible with Good Health?”

The health-related theme for the 2009 colloquium provides an ideal platform for research in an area that is relevant to all levels of athletics, from student-athletes and coaches to athletics directors and sports-medicine personnel, said Scott Kretchmar, chair of the colloquium advisory board and philosophy of sport professor at Penn State University.

The focus also fits with a greater national emphasis on exercise, added Kretchmar, who also serves as Penn State’s faculty athletics representative.

“We’re telling everyone to get out of their chair and get moving, but if we move too much or too much in a certain way, we can actually harm ourselves,” Kretchmar said.

“Last year’s theme (‘Is College Sport a Legitimate Focus for Scholarly Inquiry?’) was more of a stage-setter, talking about scholarship on intercollegiate athletics in general and trying to energize faculty and researchers to take that on. This year is much more specific and in some ways much more attractive to individuals interested in how scholarship and sport intersect.”

The colloquium was developed to elevate cross-discipline faculty oversight of college sports, as well as address the current void in research activity devoted to sports in the context of higher education.

The 2009 colloquium will feature four keynote speakers:

•         Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and professor in the kinesiology department at Michigan State University.

•         Ronald Zernicke, director of the University of Michigan’s Bone and Joint Injury and Prevention and Rehabilitation Center.

•         Matthew Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute and the LL.M. in Sports Law program for foreign lawyers at Marquette University Law School. 

•         Mariah Burton Nelson, executive director of the American Association for Physical Activity and Recreation and former basketball student-athlete at Stanford University.

Presenters will be joined by a number of reactors (two per keynote speaker) who follow the keynote with their own observations and, at times, counterpoints. The speakers and reactors were selected by a program committee composed of selected advisory board members.

New this year is a free paper session, during which a refereed pool of researchers will present their findings. A call for papers was conducted online and submissions were due this fall.

Kretchmar said the four keynote speakers have approached human health holistically rather than just through the lens of one research discipline.

“For example,” Kretchmar said, “Dan Gould will talk about the subjective side of overtraining and burnout – the psychology of high-level training. Ron Zernicke will examine the issue from a biological perspective – what happens to joints and muscles.”

Kretchmar also credits the board for selecting a mix of university researchers and in-the-field practitioners. Mariah Burton Nelson, for example, brings a key perspective as a former basketball student-athlete at Stanford.

“This is another goal we have as a board to get the practitioners and theorists talking – both have a wealth of information and they need to hear from each other,” Kretchmar said.

Among the issues to be addressed is the high frequency of knee injuries in women’s soccer.

“For young females in soccer who go from junior high through college and beyond, there is a fairly high probability of knee surgery, and there are ethical questions that go along with that,” Kretchmar said.

Gould will present first at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 13. Kirk Cureton, head of the University of Georgia’s kinesiology department, and Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, will serve as reactors to Gould’s presentation.

Zernicke follows at 3:15 p.m., with reactors Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, and Holly Silvers, a physical therapist at the Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation.

On Jan. 14, Mitten presents his findings at 10 a.m., followed by reactions from Jan Boxhill, a senior lecturer and director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Steven Stovitz, an assistant professor and primary-care physician at the University of Minnesota Medical School.