It is widely known that physical activity is highly beneficial to health and fitness. However playing sports and exercising also introduces a risk of injury. At the youth level these injuries are critical because it could have lifelong effects on your body and could potentially end your sports career before it has a chance to start. This is why the prevention of sports injuries is so important, especially in youth sports. Injuries can come from many different sources. One of the most prevalent sources is overuse, which accounts for nearly 50 percent of all sports injuries by youths according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and is also one of the most preventable. In By focusing on his ethos in the article "STOP Sports Injuries", Ken Mandel effectively argues for the prevention of injuries due to overuse in youth sports. 

Mandel uses Tommy John to establish his credibility in his article. Tommy John is one of the best pitchers in the game of baseball but he is more famous in the medical field for the surgery that is named after him. Mandel uses Tommy John because Mandel's knowledge of the great pitcher and his surgery provides evidence that he is educated on the subject. Anyone that has spent time in the baseball industry knows the name Tommy John surgery as the surgery that pitchers get when they damage the tendon in their throwing arm from overuse. John has now joined the campaign STOP Sports Injuries to focus on stressing the importance of injury prevention to kids in middle and high school sports. Ken Mandel establishes ethos by sourcing research done by numerous credible establishments including the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, American College of Sports Medicine, and other credible sources. Mandel attempts to use ethos to establish himself as a credible writer for this topic. After the conclusion of the article he includes that he has had "20 years of journalism experience" and "has written features about many sports-related topics" (Mandel). This is an attempt to cite his credibility through past experience or his situated ethos. He invents ethos through his goodwill and empathy towards children and his intelligence on the subject at hand. 

By establishing his credibility as a writer of this topic Mandel gains the trust of the reader. He establishes credibility through situated as well as invented ethos. He explains his position and why he is qualified to write about this and also bring in various credible sources. Bringing in credible sources to back up his claim provides a better argument for his article and at the same time he uses their facts and information to provide his article with logos as well. His use of a professional baseball pitcher that suffered a nearly career ending injury if it wasn't for a risky surgery that now advocates for the STOP Sports injuries shows that he is a credible writer on the subject. 

Mandel's concern of children injuring themselves also provides pathos to his argument as people are more likely to care about a child injuring themselves in sport than an adult. This is due to the fact that when a child injures themselves they usually do not know any better; a coach or parent is usually at fault for pushing them too hard and not giving them the needed amount of rest or they are just ignorant, as an adult the knowledge of the risk of injury is present. Mandel relies heavily on the emotion of fear in his article when he includes, "Damage from overuse can be permanent, increasing the risk of arthritis or the need for surgery even in adolescents," (Mandel). Using language like permanent implies a much greater risk. Also including the risk of arthritis and surgery would scare many parents and coaches. His use of pathos in the article is effectively used to show parents and coaches the real risk which increases his ethos by showing he has concerns for the youth players at risk.

He also includes logos in his argument by using facts from credible sources about injury in youth sports such as the fact that only .2 to .5 percent of high school athletes make it to their respective professional sports and that almost half of injuries in middle and high school sports are from overuse. He also includes facts such as "3.5 million children aged 14 years and younger are treated for sports injuries each year," and that half of overuse injuries are preventable according to the American College of Sports Medicine (Mandel). However he does include some logical fallacies in his article including a non-sequitur when stating that permanent damage increases the risk of arthritis. His use of logos complements his ethos by citing the information from the studies and strengthening his argument.

He also uses pathos with Kairos when describing a pitcher in the MLB. At the time that this article was published, Stephen Strasburg was just coming off of Tommy John surgery performed in 2011. A year later, in 2012 Strasburg had amazing success winning the Silver Slugger award and becoming an All Star. Around the end of the article Mandel wrote, "If these young people are good enough to be the next Stephen Strasburg, himself a Tommy John surgery survivor, their talent will surface while taking regular breaks to rest" (Mandel). In this quote Mandel could have used any successful pitcher in the Major Leagues to relate to how good their children were but he chose a pitcher that had success and this reconstructive surgery because it shows that success comes with injury if pushed too hard. Mandel wanted to use pathos to warn parents that their kids would be put at great risk if they were not given the appropriate training, stretching, and most importantly, rest. He also used pathos when he explained Strasburg as a Tommy John survivor. This surgery's list of complications only includes damage to the nerve in the elbow, which is far from death. Mandel's use of ethos in this article is effective because it establishes himself as a credible writer, which gives him the credibility to state that these injuries are preventable and explain why.

