Phone calls almost are a given for Dr. Greg Nelson on Friday nights in the fall.

A few hours after high school football games have finished and the fans have gone home, Nelson will get a call from a coach or two. A player was injured, treated in the emergency room and told to follow up with a doctor. Can Nelson help?

“At this time of year, you’ve just got the sheer volumes. ... There are a lot more phone calls from parents, trainers and coaches just because of the volume of football players that are out there playing,” Nelson said.

Fall is the busy season for high school sports, which means the injuries can add up, said Crystal Kennedy, athletics first responder and registered nurse at Southern Nash High School. Football, girls’ tennis, boys’ soccer, volleyball, cross country and girls’ golf are in full swing, which means staff is busy trying to prevent and treat the variety of injuries associated with them.

Each year, more than 7 million students participate in high school sports, where they suffer a reported 1.4 million injuries, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Web site. Most injuries were sprains or strains (52.1 percent), followed by contusions (12.3 percent), fractures (9.8 percent) and concussions (9.1 percent).Manyinjuries are hard to prevent, Kennedy said. Concussions from tackles happen routinely in football, and collisions are part of soccer. Ankle sprains are a fact of life in many sports. The best coaches and trainers can do for those situations is educate players on proper techniques to minimize the injury.

“If it is football, they are not tackling with their head down so they end up with neck injuries. ... In soccer, a lot of guys just get cleated and banged up from playing. There is really no way to prevent that,” Kennedy said.

Nash Central High School is taking injury prevention a step further this year, said Mike Caffey, head of sports medicine and athletics first responder. Last month, the school hired Buck Edmundson to fill one of the empty coaching spots as a strength and conditioning coach. Edmundson is responsible for increasing the athletes’ flexibility and helping prevent common injuries such as strains.

Several sports have recurring overuse injuries, including wrist and hand problems in volleyball, shoulder and elbow injuries in tennis and shin splints in cross country. Colleges have had strength and conditioning coaches for years to help with these problems, but focus on those areas is not something that should wait until then, Caffey said. He wishes it started at an earlier age.

“I would like to see more emphasis on conditioning at the middle school level and even at the recreation level. At least then, by the time they get to us, they have a foundation in what they need. Right now, it is not there. You are having to teach things that really their bodies should have gone through at an earlier period of time,” Caffey said.

If players are injured, the goal is to rehabilitate them and get them playing again as quickly as possible, hopefully before the next game, Nelson said. Many schools don’t have the backup players necessary to cover several injuries, but more than that, the students really want to play.

Treating players varies, depending on the school and its facility. SouthWest Edgecombe High School doesn’t have a trainer, and Wayne Phillips, an allied health science teacher, only can be an athletics first responder at football games. When players need ice wraps and whirlpool treatments, much of that work falls to the coaches.

“If they are going to truly bring athletic trainers into the school system, they are going to have to come up with a lot more money because that would be a full-time job for someone,” Phillips said.

Caffey will see an average of 10 to 15 students a day, depending on the season. He is hoping the number will decrease with Edmundson working on the students’ conditioning.

“We see kids that say we get out of the weight room and they hurt. Well, the reason they hurt is they are actually using muscles they have never used before. We are seeing an improvement, and I think we will continue to see that improvement,” Caffey said.