About Me
Athlete. Researcher. Educator.
Hi! I'm Maya Lanfer, a soccer player and rower entering my senior year of high school. My passion for female sports medicine began with a simple question:
"Why do we know so much less about female athletes than male athletes?"
Athlete
Varsity soccer player and rower passionate about helping female athletes stay healthy and perform at their best.
Researcher
Conducting independent research, interviewing experts, and translating sports medicine into practical resources.
Educator
Founder of The Captains Project and creator of educational articles, videos, and injury prevention programs.
Where It All Started
My interest in female sports medicine began in sixth grade during a capstone project on the Female Sports Medicine where I studied the impacts of hormones on athlete perfomance and The Female Athlete Triad, now more broadly recognized within Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S).
For my project, I designed and conducted a longitudinal study following 32 of my soccer teammates to investigate how hormonal changes influenced flexibility and speed throughout the menstrual cycle.
One statistic especially inspired me: at the time, only about 3% of sports medicine research focused exclusively on women. Today that number has increased to approximately 6%, but there is still much more to learn—and I hope to contribute to that progress throughout my career.
Turning Research Into Action
My focus shifted to ACL injury prevention after three of my friends tore their ACLs within a single week while playing soccer.
Since then I've written articles for The Argo, Boston Latin School's newspaper, started a YouTube channel focused on female sports medicine, interviewed the Head Team Physician at Harvard and an ACL orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital, and worked with injury prevention specialists at Boston Children's Micheli Center to develop an ACL injury prevention program based on randomized controlled trial research.
Everything on this website has been created outside of school, and on my own time because I believe female athletes deserve access to evidence-based, sport-specific health information.
The Captains Project
The Captains Project trains high school team captains to lead evidence-based ACL injury prevention warm-ups and teach proper movement mechanics to their teammates. My goal is to help athletes build safer training habits while creating a culture of injury prevention within their teams.
Bring The Captains Project to Your Team
If you're a coach, athletic director, or team captain interested in scheduling an ACL injury prevention workshop or learning more about the program, I'd love to connect.
- ✓ High school teams
- ✓ Team captain leadership workshops
- ✓ Evidence-based ACL prevention warm-ups
- ✓ Coach and athlete education