By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

Dr. Nancy Cummings was skeptical.

Differences in the way boys and girls land after they jump? Phooey. She’d been an athlete herself, overcoming six hip surgeries. She went to college and worked her way into a non-traditional profession (only one in every 20 orthopedic surgeons is female).

So when one of those men aired the hypothesis at a sports medicine seminar that guys and gals are “wired” to jump differently, Cummings didn’t wait long after arriving home to conduct her own experiment.

Cummings asked her 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter to jump. She kept her eyes just above the floor.

“My daughter landed with stiff knees. My son landed with bent knees,” said Cummings.

It left a pit in mom’s stomach. Cummings knows that such a naturally knock-kneed posture is considered a major contributor in the prevalence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears among girls and women.

Attributing the findings to human evolution, Cummings believes the only reliable fix is education.

Teaching girls how to jump freely, land in a more traditional, athletic pose and strengthen their quadriceps has become a crusade for Cummings, who is director of orthopedic surgery at Franklin Orthopedics in Farmington.

Last year, she conducted workouts for a travel team of sixth-grade basketball players. Heaven help them if they run into her at the grocery store.

“Whenever I see one of them, I make them jump for me,” Cummings said. “It has to be reinforced.”

She advises schools and youth coaches down to the pee-wee level to institute a jumping program developed by Timothy Hewett of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

By repetition, proper landing becomes a reflex action. In theory, then, fewer girls will limp into her office needing ACL reconstruction.

“I believe you would see a difference by the time these kids get to high school,” she said.

Some coaches have followed Cummings’ lead. Inspired by the chronic knee pain of his teenage daughter, Jordann, Jay High School girls’ basketball coach Chris Bessey instructs his players in plyometrics and strength exercises.

He recommends that players see an orthopedist before starting the program to make sure their knees can handle the quick turns and stops.

“We do jumping, bouncing and weight training,” said Bessey. “I haven’t had any girls go down with a serious knee injury, but this is only my second year coaching the girls’ team.”

Bates women’s basketball coach Jim Murphy hasn’t adopted any specific training for his team. Murphy, who lost at least four student-athletes to ACL injuries in the last decade, has concluded that nature outweighs nurture.

“I think you can do all the right things, then someone just comes down from a rebound and that’s it,” said Murphy. “All the ACL injuries I’ve seen were so fluky, I don’t think there is anything you could have done about it.”

Cummings is most concerned with travel teams that stretch girls’ knees beyond the usual limits as early as third or fourth grade. She’s seen ACL tears in 10-year-old patients.

At that age, there’s a strong risk that traditional reconstructive surgery could stunt the child’s growth.

“You have the problem of parents pushing kids to be the next Shaquille O’Neal,” Cummings said.

If you choose to avoid reconstructive surgery at that point, all sports are off limits, because the ACL is what provides stability to the knee.

“And eventually if you don’t reconstruct, you tear the meniscus,” she said. “That’s what Joe Namath and Bobby Orr had removed way back when. We used to think it was like the appendix, that you didn’t need it. Now they’ve both had knee replacement surgery.”