It’s all too common to see an athlete sidelined by an injury to the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament.

Designed to help stabilize the knee, the ACL is susceptible to sprains and tears when the joint is hyperextended or rotated to an extreme degree when the athlete jumps, lands, or makes a quick change in direction.

So how long might you sit on the sidelines before suiting back up? That depends. Take the field too soon, and a more severe injury can occur. Wait too long, you lose out on competitive opportunities.

Jack Magill wants better answers to that question, and the assistant professor of physical therapy education is collaborating with Elon Athletics to more easily assess when an injured athlete can return.

Magill, himself a 2014 graduate of the university’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program, is building a database of individualized performance metrics designed to help athletes take the appropriate steps in their recoveries from ACL injuries.

His current research is an outgrowth of his prior position with the Duke Division of Sports Medicine where his focus on ACL injuries originated through work alongside Dr. Jonathan Riboh, an orthopedist now with the Carolina Panthers.

“The ACL is the most researched ligament in the body,” said Magill, who joined the Elon University faculty in 2021. “We’re always looking for ways to mitigate risk and get back into action in a way that they don’t suffer secondary injuries.”

Historically, the measure used to determine when an ACL injury had healed was when the joint demonstrated the same strength and flexibility measures as the opposite leg. But leg and joint strength are asymmetrical, Magill said, making historical practices a less-than-ideal rubric.

Magill’s approach has been to collect performance metrics from a battery of preseason tests to create a more accurate baseline that will be used in case of injury. Data is then collected when an Elon University athlete injures the ACL and starts recovery. The goal? Develop better insights into which athletes carry higher risks of injury that, in turn, can inform individualized measures for recovery.

Magill is now tailoring tests to account for the diverse types of joint strains suffered across various sports. “It could be that there is a different return-to-sport battery for a wide receiver than for a point guard,” Magill said. “With a big enough data set, we’ll be able to fine-tune performance metrics to make better-informed decisions.”