Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony Officially Opens Sports Medicine Center at Village West

(From left) Jason Yoder, DPT, Operations Manager-Village West, Dr. Kevin Latz, CM Chief-Sports Medicine Center, and Dr. Adriane Latz, CM Ear, Nose & Throat Surgeon, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony officially opening the Sports Medicine Center at Village West.

A ribbon cutting to celebrate the official opening of the Sports Medicine Center at Village West was held Wednesday, May 17.

Dignitaries attending the event included Debbie Sosland-Edelman, Children’s Mercy Board Chair; Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, MD; David Alvey, Mayor of Kansas City, Kansas; and Mark Abbott, Deputy Commissioner and President of Major League Soccer; along with representatives of Sporting KC ownership, U.S. Soccer, CM Board of Directors and CM executives.

In his remarks at the event, Kevin Latz, MD, Chief-Sports Medicine Center at Children’s Mercy, said Children's Mercy is partnering with Sporting KC and U.S. Soccer to bring a first-of-its-kind collaboration between a professional sports team, a national sports federation and a sports medicine provider.

In 2016, Children's Mercy and Sporting Kansas City began a ground-breaking, long-term partnership with three primary goals:

• Improve access to pediatric-trained sports medicine
• Strengthen the community
• Protect youth athletes and educate parents and coaches

This is the only facility of its kind–where student athletes will train and rehab in the same gym as a professional team. It will extend Children's Mercy reach into Wyandotte County community, although this is a resource for the entire region. The partnership also will allow Children's Mercy to optimize education programs on topics such as sports nutrition, concussion and mental health.

The facility’s features include:

• Student athletes can rehabilitate - or work to prevent injuries - in their sport-specific environment. Room to run, cut, jump, throw a football or baseball, shoot or swing a bat.
• The two hydrotherapy pools enable athletes to perform multiple dynamic movements on an underwater treadmill with cameras whose data tracks progress and leads to further therapy decisions.
• It is the first facility in America to own the new AlterG Via400X. This machine records comprehensive data about an athlete’s performance and syncs with medical charts so doctors and parents can stay informed on a patient’s progress. And, it uses NASA-developed technology to unweight patients, which reduces impact while walking or running during rehab.
• The Human Performance Lab inside the gym is one of only a handful in the country, and it is dual-purposed: 1) For the student athlete, it allows us to study in a scientific manner both the student athlete’s gait and movement patterns. By studying student athletes’ movements in great detail, we can make safer surgical and return-to-play decisions. 2) This lab also will benefit children with traditional orthopedic problems like cerebral palsy and spina bifida.

Learn more about the Sports Medicine Center at Children's Mercy.