Abstract

Introduction: To assess the degree of sport specialization of a children, there is the newly developed 4-point scale [24]. This tool has been used to observe the correlation between sport specialization levels and injury risk. The Child-Focused Injury Risk Screening Tool (ChildFIRST) is a process-based tool assessing 10 skills to evaluate movement competence of the lower extremity in children aged 8 to 12 years old. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between the participants’ level of sport specialization and their movement competence, scores they receive on the ChildFIRST. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 70 participants (34 hockey players and 36 figure skaters), 8 to 12 years old, took part in a survey assessing their sport specialization level and were evaluated using the ChildFIRST tool. We analyzed the data using correlations, One-Way ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U and descriptive statistics. Results: This study found that older athletes were more specialized and performed better on the ChildFIRST. However, it did not find a correlation between specialization level and ChildFIRST scores. When comparing the hockey to the figure skating group using non-parametric tests, we found that specialization levels and ChildFIRST scores are both significantly higher in the figure skating groups. Conclusion: These results suggests that in children aged 8 to 12 years old, there is no relationship between specializing early and movement competence in this study. They do however demonstrate that the figure skating group, across all ages, are more specialized and better at movement competence (performing better on lower limb motion and alignment movements).