Ohio's Concussion in Youth Athletics Law

On December 20th, 2012, Governor John Kasich signed House Bill 143 into law in Ohio.  This is Ohio's version of the Zack Lystedt law that regulates youth athletics when a concussion is suspected by the adults in charge of the program.  This law provides for the following provisions for youth athletics in Ohio:

All parents and athletes must receive information that includes the risk involved with participating in their chosen sport as it pertains to concussions. This pamphlet is to be designed and distributed by the Ohio Department of Health.

All coaches and officials (including HS and MS officials) must attend a course on concussions every three years.  They have two options available to them to complete this requirement.

1. They may attend a local Pupil Activity (PAP) Permit program that all high school and middle school coaches are already required to attend every three years. This option incurs some costs to the individual that include the application fee to the Ohio Department of Education (currently $45) and whatever fees the provider of the course charge (commonly about $20). As a condition of renewing the permit, HS and MS coaches ALSO have to complete the online program below.
2. This PAP can be cost prohibitive to many volunteer parents to coach in their son's or daughter's league. They are required to take a class approved by the Ohio Department of Health (ODOH) which are posted at http://bit.ly/WDPpcU. This list of approved classes is required for ALL coaches and ALL officials.

• It needs to be noted that these non-PAP classes will allow the individual to coach any level of competition that is not sponsored by the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA). These classes will not substitute for the PAP for HS/MS competition.  Any HS/MS coach that does not complete the PAP program is ineligible to sit on the sidelines for competition and risks the school being penalized $250 per incident.

Any kid that displays signs and symptoms of having suffered a concussion must be immediately removed from practice or competition that day.  They may not return until they have been cleared by a physician or a healthcare provider working under the direction of a physician.

• This can create some problematic scenarios where a healthcare provider may try to clear a person without proper direction in place.  This was designed to prevent many alternative medicine persons from trying to act independently and return a kid to play inappropriately.  However, the lawmakers did recognize that having a physician attend every practice and game in the state is not only expensive, but also inappropriate.  Therefore, the legislature allowed other healthcare providers to have this authority to do so.  Most other states designate these other providers as athletic trainers (ATs), physical therapists (PTs), registered nurses (RNs), physicians assistants (PAs), emergency medical technicians (EMTs), etc.  Ohio did not want to get caught in the political struggles of these professional groups when writing this law, so they allowed the physicians to decide who is qualified and who is not.
• An interesting point will be that physical therapists are not required to be under the direction of a physician in Ohio any longer.  It is possible that a PT (most likely a private practice PT) may try to return a child to play without having a physician contract behind them to do so.  This PT would be at serious risk for sanctions if they do so.
• PTs are not the only ones that risk this issue.  It is unfortunately very common for off duty nurses and EMTs to wander onto the sidelines during an injury situation.  I have had to tell more than one off duty professional that they need to return to their seat and allow me to do my job because they are putting my license at risk.  Many people do not trust that anyone else has the education and background to provide appropriate care in an emergency situation, and in particular, athletic trainers.  However, even athletic trainers need to have a contract with the team or league and a physician in order to allow then to perform their duties.  This can lead to some very sticky situations if the letter of the law is not followed.
• However, there is a provision that allows any organization (OHSAA) to have a more stringent set of rules than this provision in the Ohio Law that defines who is allowed to return a child to play.  This law allows the OHSAA to continue to restrict this list of medical professionals to MDs, DOs, and athletic trainers.  This can also create a point of contention with other health care providers who may believe that this state law gives them the authority to return a child to play under this law in HS/MS events.  It does not allow anything to change at these OHSAA sanctioned events.  

Coaches and officials can be held liable. Coaches of non-scholastic teams and officials can be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned for up to 30 days for "willful and wanton misconduct." Needless to say, this is a strong deterrent to allowing a child with questionable symptoms to RTP.

The problems with the new law occur when the child participates in multiple leagues or sports or is active at home in unsupervised play.  No law could prevent a child from heading out into the back yard with their siblings and neighbors and climbing the jungle gym, jumping on the trampoline, or playing a pick up game of baseball when they shouldn't.  This is the sole responsibility of parents and guardians of the child and it must be taken seriously.  However, this becomes a bigger problem for volunteer coaches when a child sustains a concussion in a travel baseball practice in the morning or even in some unsupervised activity.  The coaches may follow all the rules and do everything properly there so there are no issues.  However, if the child then participates in a hockey game that evening and the coaches are unaware of the earlier issue, then you have a major problem.  Obviously, the coaches could not be held liable for something they have no knowledge of, but what are the parents'/guardians' responsibilities and liabilities?  It is very easy for me to believe that  parent would allow a kid to play in the game that evening, especially if it is "important to that season."  I see that excuse far too often.

Another problem with the law is that is does NOTHING for the academic issues that a child may face after sustaining a head injury.  It is well documented (and should be fairly obvious) that there are often cognitive deficits that occur after a concussion that make schooling significantly more difficult for the child.  There is also some research that indicates that continuing to "work through" and not allow for rest and healing from cognitive stresses can increase the length of time that it takes to recover from the injury.  It is therefore up to the parents and the school to communicate these issues with each other and to make sure the child appropriately taken care of.  There is a large range of accommodations that can be made for these children, but that is the topic of another post.

The last problem that was brought to my attention by a lawyer who tweeted me.  He said the trial lawyers are going to have a "field day" with this new law.  The "willful and wanton misconduct" clause leaves a lot of room for interpretation by prosecutors and juries to determine whether or not a coach is going to be held liable for a child's injury.  While I agree that this is very subjective, I can't think of a better way of doing this.

In conclusion, most interested parties in this this process are happy to see this law pass.  The effective date for this will be April 26th, 2013, which happens to coincide with National Athletic Trainers Month.  It will be very easy to help promote both the profession and this new law in Ohio when it goes into effect.  The Ohio Athletic Trainers Association is already working to promote both ATs and the law and has encouraged their members to share this video to explain the importance of athletic trainers in this process. Of course, this could also bring a large amount of attention to the lack of athletic trainers in schools across Ohio and increase the job market opportunities for ATs.

• For more information on what a concussion is, please refer to this video that was produced by the National Athletic Trainers Association in partnership with the National Hockey League.

A new idea

I was in a discussion a couple weeks ago with a few colleagues on Twitter where they were showing pictures of some the most damaged and scratched football helmets that were turned in for reconditioning at the end of the 2012 season.  During the discussion, I thought that taking pictures and documenting the helmets of those who are sustain multiple concussions throughout a season can tell a lot about the athlete's style of play.  If I can combine that with the game videos and compare this data with those kids that are not subject to multiple head injuries, I believe that this can go a long way to helping to change coaches' minds about leading with the head when tackling.

Unfortunately, all of our helmets were already sent out for reconditioning before I had this idea, so it will have to wait until next year.  I am writing this here to see if there is interest from the research type personnel out there in this kind of data. I think that it could be very valuable, especially if we can design an online reporting system of the data (or add it to some existing database.)

I am sure that this is something that could be easily replicated by many high school ATs around the country to help get more information about the frequency of these injuries and their causes.

Head Games Review

Last week, I downloaded a copy of the video documentary Head Games. This film has received high praise from many in the film industry and the medical community. It shines a spotlit on the ever growing issue of concussions (mild traumatic brain injuries) in athletics today.

Much of the first half of the film is a thorough explanation about who some of the key people are in the country who are working to raise the of awareness this issue. During this time, the film describes the ongoing fight to bring a greater awareness of the seriousness of this injury into the public consciousness, especially with how that struggle was, and is continuing to be fought with the National Football League. The producers try to show how the NFL was working to keep the concussion issues covered up and likens the NFL's actions to a police officer at a crime scene telling everyone to "Keep moving, there is nothing to see here." As to whether or not they were also trying to hint that the NFL should be liable for some criminal misdoings, please draw your own conclusions.

After the film finishes with its history of the NFL, they spend time showing that this is not a problem that is exclusive to football. The producers tell about the prevalence of concussions in the National Hockey League, soccer, boxing, and other sports. They interview some victims of TBI who range from high school to retired professional athletes. All of interviewees tell the similar stories. They were so anxious to play, to not let the team down, that they were willing to risk sacrificing their future for a game. The interviewees also state that they were often making these decisions from an undereducated position. They then attempt to reinforce that if they knew what they do now, their decisions would likely have been different.

This is welcome and I am excited to see the advocacy for changing the attitudes about concussions in the public eye.  I have had too many confrontations and overly tense discussions with athletes and their parents when I decide to hold them out of competition because of a potential concussion.

The biggest criticism that I have with this film is that the lack of attention that is given to the often required academic accommodations for youth victims. This is such an important part of the recovery that is often being overlooked and even scorned by many school districts. I am lucky to work in a school district that understands the issue well and is willing to work with me to help accommodate the needs of their injured kids so well. (Many thanks to the school nurses, administration, and teaching staff at http://www.perry-lake.org.)  However, one does not have to work hard to find horror stories about how kids were treated by their peers and, in some instances, adults when they were recovering from a concussion.  Too many people do not understand that cognitive rest could be just as important in the recovery process as physical rest.

I understand that there are limiting factors such as time and money when making a film of this kind, but I saw no references that would have allowed viewers to go to a website like the CDC's (http://www.cdc.gov/concussions) to find more information. This is a very easy and inexpensive thing to add to any movie. To really make this easy, a QR code could have been added to the credits  to allow viewers to jump to a website with a listing of additional resources.

I know, I'm being a little picky here, but two things are motivating this small rant. The first is my educational background that always has me thinking about how to improve the use of technology to educate populations. (My thanks to Cleveland State University for that Masters degree in Educational Technologies; I hope I am putting their instruction to good use.)

The second reason is that the film has such a golden opportunity to educate that I think they just missed a chance to make it significantly better at little cost. Like I said, this might be a petty criticism, but I think it needed to be done in this film. There are many subtopics to concussions that need to be discussed. Further complicating the problem is that the data surrounding concussions, and all of its subtopics, is constantly evolving. The producers could easily make each of these subtopics into their own full length films if they wanted to give them the attention they deserve. I simply think that the follow up to this film could have been improved by giving convenient access to information that is continuously updated and relevant.

In closing, I highly recommend this film to anyone with an interest in youth athletics and I will probably show this film to my colleagues in a movie night. We may even try to make a continuing education discussion using the film as the centerpiece of our discussion. The film also serves as a notice for those that are still skeptical as to why this issue is so important. This film explains why the changes need to be made in the games we play before we end up losing them completely.

One small addendum:
I meant to include Dustin Fink's work at The Concussion Blog in the list of links of highly valuable resources. I can't state enough how much praise he deserves for the work he doing there.

Some Changes to Ohio's Wrestling Assessments

This past May, the OHSAA asked all of the state's master assessors to join them in Columbus for a meeting.  At this meeting various issues regarding the assessment program were discussed.  Chief amongst these complaints were the unauthorized changes that occasionally occurred to some kids' records after they were entered into the database by the assessors.

This was an experience that I had dealt with last year when I performed an assessment on a young man only to have the information inadvertently deleted by another assessor.  This assessor thought that the young man's information was somehow a "leftover" from last year and never got deleted, for whatever reason.  While this was not a big deal and I was able to reenter the information very quickly, there were other instances around the state where changes were being made of a much more troublesome magnitude.

Therefore, beginning this year, once the data has been entered into the database by the assessor, only a master assessor can go back and edit the information.  If a mistake is made by the assessor, then they must contact a local master assessor and request the edit after providing a copy of the individual profile form that they recorded all the data on.  It is the hope of the OHSAA that this will limit some of the issues that we have seen in the past.

The coaches also made one request of the OHSAA to "close a loophole" in the rule.  The part of the rule the coaches had a problem with was that a kid could fail an initial hydration assessment and then try again two days later with the same general assessor (these are usually the schools' athletic trainers) without a second team there to make sure that everything is being done properly.  (Part of the previous rule required a minimum of two teams present to perform these assessments to limit cheating.  However, it was understood that for the one or two stragglers that couldn't make the assessment or failed the first assessment that the assessor could just do them individually.)

This year, the wrestler that fails their initial hydration test must go to another assessor for the test if the original assessor it that school's AT.  It is the hope of the coaches that by doing it this way, there is less chance for cheating.  This does not apply to the master assessors.

Finally, a rule that didn't change but was heavily reinforced by the OHSAA this year was requirement of 48 hours need to pass before a wrestler can retest following a failed hydration test.  There were many stories of kids who would fail the initial test in the morning and would then schedule an appointment with another local assessor later that day to retry and get the test done.  This was happening far too often because the assessor who did the first exam was not getting to enter the data immediately following the exam when a wrestler failed, if they entered it at all.  It was stressed to all the assessors that in the event if a failed hydration test, entering the data immediately is the only effective means of preventing a kid from getting retested within 48 hours of the initial test.  Hopefully, this emphasis will help to alleviate this problem.

In closing, if there are any questions from any Ohio general assessors, please feel free to ask your local master assessor first before contacting the OHSAA.  The OHSAA gets bombarded with questions that are easily answered by the master assessors and we can help to ease tis burden by following some common sense protocols like this.

Heat Acclimatization Policy Comparison

A recent post on the Korey Stringer Institute/University of Connecticut's web site compares the heat acclimatization policies of all 50 states to that of their own recommendations.  Not surprisingly, most states did not comply with their guidelines.  What is interesting is that many southern states, where the heat lasts longer into the season and is more intense, have not complied with these guidelines.

For Ohio, where it affects me, I am aware that the Ohio High School Athletic Association considered these guidelines, but rejected them.  Their argument, from what we were told, is that our region of the country does not experience the same kinds of weather conditions as the southern states do.  I agree that we don't have the issues as far into the season since the temperatures usually moderate by the 3rd week of the season in early September, but these guidelines weren't meant to control practices after the start of the regular season.  These guidelines are meant to govern the two a day sessions that fill the first 2-3 weeks of practices.  During that time, we often do have temperatures that can be threatening.  But even this is not consistent.  The most common weather pattern is to have 1-3 days of hot temps followed by up to a week or more of moderate temps and occasionally even have some really cool days thrown in the mix.  Some years we never see a temperature above 80 with very low humidities.  To comply with these rules with the wide variance in local weather patterns would, at times, be difficult to explain.  Therefore, I think the better solution is to have a certified athletic trainer at every school that can make these recommendations based on their education and experience.  I would advocate for the OHSAA to mandate every school that fields a collision sport has a licensed AT on staff.  Currently, it stands as a "strong recommendation."

I guess I could be waiting a while van this one.

Concussions and our Kids -- review

After getting the chance to sit and read this book,  I found a great many points that reinforced what I had read in other texts and heard from other experts.  This book does a nice job of summarizing the issues surrounding the traumatic head injuries in youth sports today.

In the book, Dr. Cantu does call for no hitting in football, no heading in soccer, and no body checking in hockey until age 14.  All of which are very controversial stands to take in a culture where these sports are such an integral part of childhood and how parents raise their children.  I think that one part of the chapter is overlooked in which he does make the concession that this complete ban is probably unrealistic, but better efforts should be made to change the number of hits children sustain in practice.  He cites several examples, but the soccer reference stood out the most to me.  He describes parent (volunteer) coaches kicking the ball with a great deal of force and then asking the kids to repetitively practice heading those kicked balls.  This might go on for about 30-40 times per kid in each practice.

He questions if this is really necessary.  During the course of the game, it is more probable that there will only be a few headers with this kind of force that are even possible.  He argues that there is no reason kids should be trying to head balls that are given that much velocity in practice at all, much less 30-40 times.  The same skill can be taught with less force and be much safer to the kids in practice.

Dr. Cantu also questions the practice of tackling in football and cites St. John's University in Minnesota that has not had a full contact practice since the Eisenhower administration.

"The Johnnies' football coach is John Gagliardi, who sets the records for wins and longevity every time he steps on the field. That happens when you're well into your seventh decade of coaching college football. Coach Gagliardi has notched more victories than any college football coach in history, approaching five hundred. His teams have won national championships four times. He is one of two active coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame."

He uses this example of how weeks of avoiding collisions on the practice field can still produce a quality football team that wins championships and does so at a lower risk to their athletes.  Dr. Cantu states that in order for this to become more widespread, it requires many more football coaches to take the same leap of faith that Mr. Gagliardi did and try it for themselves.  However, changing this belief may be even harder than moving mountains.

Finally, I have read a couple of reviews of this book that took a decidedly harsh stance on Dr. Cantu's reference to the older standards of grading concussions according to their symptoms.  Today, this is widely frowned upon since all mild traumatic brain injuries are completely different from each other and grading the injury is not effective in predicting time away from sport.  In short, concussions that were once thought of as "mild" occasionally keep a child off the field longer than some concussions that were once thought to be "moderate" or "severe."  Therefore, the old system of grading the head trauma is not effective.

I don't think that Dr. Cantu was trying to advocate, however, for the continued use of the grading system that he developed.  It is my belief that in this chapter, he was trying to do nothing more than give a history of the progression of how we treated this injury and include his contributions to those efforts.  I don't think that it can be understated that he was not trying to advocate for the continued use of the grading system of concussions in this book.

Overall, I would recommend this book to parents of kids in all contact and collision sports so that they can have a greater appreciation for the risks that their child assumes when they take the field.  While some sports certainly have a much higher risk and greater rate of injury, (i.e. football and hockey) no sport is safe from the possible effects of TBI.

A long absence

Wow, I barely noticed that it has been two months since I last posted on this site.  The truth is, that is just a result of how busy I have been this fall season.  Ankles, shoulders, a few knees and more mTBIs than I care to think of distributed between all of the sports that I work with.  I don't think I have had a team that I could honestly say has been "healthy" all season.  Thankfully, the fall season is winding down now and I should be able to spend more time reading and such.

For my next post, I will review the Cantu book Concussions and Our Kids and offer my opinions on this book.  Be on the look for the post soon since I just finished reading the book last night.

The OHSAA sneaks one in

The Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) always tries to keep the safety of the kids at the forefront of their efforts governing interscholastic athletics.  Nobody can ever argue that.  They work hard each and every day to make every sport as safe as possible.  However, it does seem that on occasion, they make significant policy changes that can have a sweeping effect on one or more sports, but don't advertise the change as well as they should.

As if to demonstrate this again, the OHSAA made a significant change to their heat illness prevention policy and created a scale that requires increasingly restrictive guidelines at increasing thresholds of heat index.  The policy is very specific and includes the cessation of competition in high heat and humidity.  The policy is long overdue and welcomed by every AT who wanted something in writing to define more clearly what a high temperature is.  It will eliminate many of the heated conversations (pun intended) between the AT and coaches about when to modify and cancel practice.

The problem with the policy is that is was added to the manual mailed to all coaches in mid-July.  Most coaches never even look at this manual, I would wager.  Also, the policy was briefly referred to in the state rules interpretation meeting for football coaches and officials.  However, the people that will most often be asked to enforce the policy, the athletic trainers (where they exist at schools,) were never told of the policy.  We found out about it mostly by chance.  I find this to be very disturbing since a policy like this greatly increases our liability, but if we don't know about it, we can do nothing about it.  It would have only taken a simple phone call from the OHSAA to the Ohio Athletic Trainers Association (OATA) to make them aware of it and they would gladly have released the information in our monthly emails, I'm sure.

The other problem with this policy is that it is in effect for football only.  While football does have the highest risk with all of the pads that trap heat and inhibit cooling, every outdoor sport that competes in hot, humid weather would benefit from the new policy.  I believe tat this should be applied to all sports, and not just football.

CoachSmart

Another app has been released that can assist coaches in planning their practices around inclement weather.  The app is for both the iOS and Android platforms and is called CoachSmart.  This app has some nice features to allow the user to immediately identify temperature, humidity, and heat index readings on the opening screen.

This screen will also temporarily enable alerts to be sent to your phone when lightning strikes are in the area.  I also highly recommend that you keep a temperature and humidity graph with you on your phone so that you can apply this data effectively when designing your practices. (black and white, colorized, colorized with additional information)

The lightning button brings up a screen that gives you information on when the last lightning strike has been in the vicinity.

There are a few issues with this page since the connectivity of this has had some issues and didn't record several severe storms with lightning around me in the last couple of days.  Likewise the map page that is supposed to show a graphical representation of the lightning didn't work as advertised either.  I assume this will be fixed shortly by the developers of the app.

Another issue that I had with this app is that it only looked for lightning within 24 miles.  I am not sure where this value came from, since most detectors are designed to look for it within 30 miles.  This is the minimum distance that was established by the NCAA.  This discrepancy makes this feature of the app useless at the collegiate level.  Hopefully, this will be addressed by the app developer as well.

There is also a nice countdown timer included in the app that is almost certainly designed to time the waiting period after a lightning strike since the default is set to 30 min.  However, that is not to say that is can only be used for that timing.  The timer can be adjusted to time other events that require a  countdown timer.

The app includes the ability for the user to construct an SMS (text) list to contact your entire team at once. The user can also build more than one team.  I have used it to build a "fall sports" and "spring sports" coaches list to contact all of my head and assistant coaches at once.  Obviously, you would need to have text messaging services on a phone to be able to use this feature.

Finally, the last screen contains information on how to respond in the event of an emergency.  It offers brief information on first aid protocols for various injuries and how to respond.

The app is a very strong start to being a great help to coaches, but it does have a couple of shortcomings.  Hopefully, the lightning detection portion, which appears to be some sort of connectivity issue, will be sorted out quickly and patched to work.  I will revisit this post if and when that occurs.

7/26/2012 Addendum:
The bug fixes were released earlier this week and our first thunderstorm came through this morning. I am happy to say that the lightning features are now working and are extremely helpful. I am somewhat hopeful that the heat index will climb to over 100° today so that I can see if the other reported issue was fixed as well. (There were multiple reports that the hundreds place was not showing when the heat index climbed to more than 100°.)

Youth Football League Takes Educational Initiative

In this post, I need to give some love to my sons' youth football league.  This league, which is for kids from 7-12 years of age (2nd-6th grade) from 6 different communities in Northeast Ohio.  The Freeway Youth Football League, recognizing the issues of sports medicine in football, are taking some serious steps to educate themselves before it is a requirement by state law.  They have already scheduled a conference for the coaches in the entire league.  This includes approximately 50 teams with 5 coaches a piece.  Hopefully, this awareness will translate into an attentive group that is willing to learn.  Since the class is scheduled for later this month, I will update this post with how it goes.

Helpful Dietary Aids

Over the winter, I was introduced to a website that I thought might be a nice experiment to try before I recommend it to athletes or others who are worried about their weight.  The site, www.myfitnesspal.com, is a calorie counter that has a few nice features built into it.  The most important of these is the fact that the site designers have seen the power of mobile platforms and have designed apps that for several different operating systems that tie in to their database.  It is now possible to get real time information about the number of calories you are consuming while you are sitting at the dinner table.  The user does not have to write it down now and copy it later.

Because it is a calculator, it does all of the number crunching for the user.  It has already been programmed with a wide variety of foods from restaurants and from the grocery store.  Best of all, you can scan bar codes to quickly look up exactly what it is that you are eating using your smartphone's camera.  Assuming that the product is in the website's database, it will fill in all the nutritional information for you.

There are other options for creating and saving some of your homemade meals.  The caloric count and and other nutritional information can also be added to the site for each of these meals.  To date, I have only added a few meals to it, but I certainly plan on adding more.

Overall, it is a website that I have had great success with in modifying my diet.  I was amazed at how many of little snacks (especially the beverages) added up so quickly.  I look forward to recommending the site to student athletes who are looking to track their diet and lose or gain weight.  I also look forward to continuing to improve my own health using the site.  By the way, did I mention that the website was free?

Ohio YMCA gets TBI wrong

In Ohio, we are one of the last states to pass legislation protecting the young athlete from the abuses that can occur from negligent or ignorant coaches in regards to managing TBIs.  It makes no difference if the coach is a high school varsity coach or the volunteer parent in a recreational league, the injury does not discern the difference.  In fact, much of the current data is showing that the younger an athlete is, the higher the risk is of chronic issues.  The legislature needs to stand firm in this fight and continue to push this bill forward.  The stance that the Ohio YMCA has taken again the provision that an athlete must be removed from competition for showing signs of a TBI is standard practice in most other states that have already passed similar legislation.  This argument needs to be disregarded as it is laughable.  If the requirement about removing the injured athlete is removed from the bill, then there is NO recourse against a coach that chooses to not follow the law.  Unfortunately, I have seen this exact level of irresponsibility in youth football in this past season.  A coach was ready to lynch an official for trying to remove an athlete during "a big game" despite the symptoms that the young man was exhibiting.  Yes YMCA, it does still happen because their are volunteer parents out there that still don't get it.

7/11/2012 - Addendum  to this post.

In May, the YMCA was able to work with state legislatures and come to a compromise that they were willing to accept.  The bill has moved on and passed the state house and is now sitting before the state senate.  The senate is expected to vote and pass this bill quickly when they reconvene after the elections in November.

Mighty Mite Athletics

For much of the history of athletics with kids younger than high school, it has been widely believed that the impacts in contact sports such as football and hockey are not as great as they are in high school, collegiate and adult athletics.  This theory has come from the simple belief that because speeds are slower, the mass is smaller, and therefore, the accelerations are less.  What this theory has not taken into account very often is the lack of skill and experience in the sport that often allows older athletes to brace against and withstand these greater collisions.

Recently, a Virginia Tech research project looked at the forces in youth football by placing accelerometers in the helmets of various players of a local league.  What they found was shocking.  Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC fame, has recently published on his blog, StonePhillipsReports.com, a short video on the findings of this Va Tech research.  This video is worth the time for all coaches and parents of youth athletes in contact sports.

 

Picture taken from Head Impact Exposure in Youth Football by Ray W. Daniel, Steven Rowson, and Stefan M. Duma

The report reveals that children were suffering comparable g forces to those experienced by older populations in football.  The most disappointing part of this study was that the highest g forces were being experienced during practices, not games.  What makes this finding particularly disturbing was that coaches have a much greater degree of control over what happens during practices than they do over the action in games.  The harder hits should never be occurring during practices.

This research is too important to ignore.  To help get this publicized more, PBS Newshour gave the report air time and conducted an online chat with viewers that included Stone Phillips.  There is also a brief follow-up interview that is located on the same page that summarizes the same arguments of inexperience and lack of skill and strength that affect the young athletes.  The Concussion Blog, by Dustin Fink, also identified the PBS report to increase its publicity.

It is my hope that more research will be performed with children of these younger ages and that it will also include more sports than just football.  If our youngest children are indeed being consistently exposed to these high g forces while playing at their age, then we should reconsider how we teach the game to them.