WesternTiger said:
Not sure doing an ankle (Castagna and Short) or knee (Drummond) is anything but bad luck!
Impact injuries aside (and I don't know the specifics of the above injuries), but in general our muscles, joints, and ligaments are one big system that feed off each other. Any weakness in one system can be transferred to injuries in other parts of the system. Eg weak glutes can be a factor in hip pain, and a treatment of hip pain is to strengthen your glutes.
Since we do want to push 18yos to their limit, a few injuries are bound to happen unless we don't push them. Running technique is also a factor, with Corey Ellis a prime example... the way he lopes around is inefficient for absorbing the force of each step, therefore his ankles, knees, and hips take more of a pounding compared to a Brandon Ellis, who has a much high cadence and better foot strike. He'll improve his technique over time and strengthen the surrounding muscles so less force goes through his joints. In short, we can control for ankle/knee injuries to some degree, it's not purely about luck. But it's a balancing act between risk of injury vs rate of improvement.
Rookies tend to lean towards rate of improvement over caution towards overtraining. Understandably so. Cotchin was the same.