A new report released by Safe Kids Worldwide shows young athletes suffer injuries from sports every 25 seconds, some injuries are so severe they require hospital visits.

According to the SafeKids.org news release, 1.35 million times a year a young athlete suffers a sports injury severe enough to go to the emergency room.  The report titled  "Game Changers" takes an in-depth look at data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to see what kinds of injuries are keeping kids off the field.

The report studied the 14 most popular sports amongst youth.

"Concussions account for 163,000 of those ER visits, or 12 percent. That's a concussion-related ER visit every three minutes," Safe Kids said in a statement. "Surprisingly, it is not just high school athletes suffering concussions; athletes ages 12 to 15 make up almost half (47%) of the sports-related concussions seen in the ER, a statistic made even more disturbing by the knowledge that younger children with concussions take a longer time to recover than older children."

Findings reported also show knee injuries account for one in 10 sports injuries.  Female athletes are eight times more likely to have knee injuries than male athletes, specifically tears to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

"The study details both the types of injuries and the rates of injuries for the most popular sports," Safe Kids said.  "Not surprising, in 2011, the sport with the most injuries is football, which also has the highest concussion rate. Wrestling and cheerleading have the second and third highest concussion rate. The sport with the highest percent of concussion injuries is ice hockey."

Safe Kids believes teaching athletes injury prevention skills is key to limit players getting hurt on the field. Players should be taught proper hydration habits, warm-up exercises and stretches to prevent common injuries.

Players should learn what areas of their body are being stress the most and coaches should target exercises accordingly.  Most important of all, coaches and parents should encourage athletes to get plenty of rest.

Another key in injury prevention is teaching players to speak up about their injuries, according to Safe Kids.  Sometimes players feel as though they are letting down their team by sitting out a game, but coaches should make the proper decisions when allowing an athlete to play.  The important part is protecting the "long-term interests" of the player.

"We uncovered some surprising and disturbing data about how often our kids are being injured playing sports," Kate Carr, president and CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide, said in a news release.  "But we also found some inspiring stories from people and programs that are making a marked difference."