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.

Dateline investigation - supplements

Last night, March 18th 2012, I was channel surfing and came across a Dateline story with Chris Hansen of  "To Catch a Predator" fame that looked into the dangers of the dietary supplement market.  They discussed many of the issues that I have been presenting at coaches' education lectures for many years.  Dateline was investigating one product that was purchased at a nationwide retailer that was making several people very ill.  The interesting part is that they even went one step further.

By now, it should be widely understood by the U.S. consumer that the supplement market is highly unregulated and there is little the FDA can do to stop bogus or dangerous products from reaching the market.  What the Dateline investigation exposed was that the problem may be even more widespread than most of us originally feared.  Since the FDA does not have the authority to regulate the supplement market before products reach the shelves, the work is left up to private labs to authenticate the products.  Dateline investigated and exposed one of these private labs for their questionable testing standards.  The process was referred to as "rubber stamping" products.  This was made clear when the lab in question missed the obvious poisons that Dateline secretly added to their bogus products.  The lab in question tried to place the blame back on the Dateline crew for "falsifying their product research" despite the fact that all the other labs that Dateline gave product to for testing found the poisons and warned against selling the product.

This investigation clearly shows that the labels on the containers don't always accurately describe what is in a product and need to be researched well before a dietary supplement product is consumed.  This completely validates the warnings that I have been giving for many years in the seminars for high school coaches.

The most disturbing part is that the commercially available supplement that Dateline was investigating was found at a store that works hard at projecting a strong, safe image.  The retail outlet outlet, in their defense, pulled the product from their shelves quickly after the problem was discovered.  However, if this retailer was truly looking out for their reputation and best interests, they would be demanding that suppliers of the products that they sell work with specified labs that are of high reputation and avoid certifying their products using labs with questionable methods.

A day late, but hey, it lasts all Month!

Yep, the calendar affirms my belief that we are now in the month of March.  That means a lot of things like tournament basketball and state wrestling tournaments in the world of high school athletics.  However, there is one other thing that it means to the athletic trainers.  It also means that March is National Athletic Training Month.  The one month of the year where athletic trainers across the country will work hard to promote the work that they do for high schools, colleges, professional teams, and many other settings.  Since I don't want to miss the bandwagon on this one, Happy National Athletic Training Month.

A rememberance.

The only thing for this week is to remember those families that were affected by the shootings at Chardon High School.  Please keep them in your prayers.

Super Bowl NFL Safety Commerical

Last night in the Super Bowl, the NFL played a 60 second commercial that was billed as their message on the safety of the players.  Upon hearing the initial hype about the spot, I was intrigued since I had read that it was intended to promote safety in the game at all levels.  I was anticipating a message aimed at young athletes and their parents about using appropriate tackling technique or to report all symptoms of injuries, especially TBI, to appropriate medical professionals.  There was even a small hope that the NFL would also have promoted the use of athletic trainers on the sidelines of every high school game and practice.  The possibilities of their message were endless as far as I was concerned and hoped for.  What better way to promote the safety in the game than to do so in the biggest arena on the biggest stage?



After watching the spot, which aired as the first commercial at the end of the third quarter, I found it was seriously lacking in its message.  I was sincerely disappointed to see a history of safety advancements in the game with no explanation as to why the improvements were made.  A simple explanation of why helmets were first introduced would have been wonderful, but it was left up to the viewer to interpret the reason.  Only those familiar with the history of the game, and in particular with the history of the football helmet, would have understood the significance of each stage presented in the commercial.  Casual fans of the game would have no chance of understanding without researching it.

Instead of promoting the safety of players in the game, the commercial gave the message "Please stop the lawsuits against the league, we are trying to make things better, really we are."  Unfortunately, the history of the NFL argues against this statement.  The rules changes were usually very slow in coming in the NFL.  In some cases they were much later than the NCAA and NFHS rules, and were implemented in smaller increments.  This slow responses continues to indicate a bigger interest in the league's finances over player safety.   It certainly is not the best way to win over the NFL's critics.

In the end, the commercial was a nice collection of video clips that promoted the game and only offered a passing thought to the safety of the players.  It should be recorded as a badly missed opportunity to make a real difference in youth football.

Recent media review

Since I missed the airing of the CNN presentation last weekend, I will be setting by recorder to make sure it gets the re-airing this weekend. (There is, of course, a basketball game to work at the same time.)

In the meantime, the ESPN Outside the Lines piece that took on Riddell and described their marketing campaign on their revolution helmets as being questionable was very informative for the public.  The article exposed the issue of Riddell trying to quote a 2006 study that found a 31% reduction rate in TBIs with their helmets.  The problem with this claim is that the critics of this study find it to be seriously flawed with a big conflict of interest since Riddell financed the study.  The ESPN piece also describes the Virginia Tech helmet comparison study in some detail and how the independently funded study's findings.  It is worth the time to watch the video that is posted by following the above link.

ESPN also turned the spotlight on to the helmet reconditioning industry and exposed some serious flaws in that process as well.  They describe a particularly scary situation where a 1 year old helmet is likely to be returned to a school with parts that are much older or mismatched that compromise the safety of the helmet.  While this is certainly beyond the reach of any individual to change these practices, I think that a sufficient outcry across the football world will get more done.  This industry has too much at stake to cut corners and needs to increase the standards to which they perform.  None of these inconsistencies are excusable especially when you are dealing with young athletes.

Here we go again

Another professional athlete makes some irresponsible statements and a major newspaper is more than happy to perpetuate the mistake by publishing his comments.  This time, Brian Urlacher of the Chicago Bears admits that he would hide potential TBI symptoms form the team's medical staff so that he could continue to play.  The comments are incredibly irresponsible and they give kids terrible ideas on how to usurp their medical staffs and stay on the field.  It is because of incidents like this that the education of the public slows to a crawl.  It would be my hope that at some point, the NFL would be able to fine athletes for comments like this, but I don't see that ever happening without risking a lawsuit from the ACLU.

A recent, concerning event

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted our biggest wrestling tournament of the year.  It is a two day event using eight mats in our field house.  The event starts on Friday night with four groups of four round robin that determine the seeding for the two eight man double elimination brackets in each weight class for Saturday.  Needless to say, there is a lot of wrestling and certainly a lot of opportunity for injury to occur.

On Saturday, a young man came limping over to me from a visiting team and asked me to look at his knee.  He was unable to bear full weight on the leg and most of the pain was on the medial side.  It turns out, according to his history, he likely injured his knee early in the fall during his football season.  He was able to "grit it out" and competed through the rest of football and here we are in early January looking at it after his opponent twisted his leg.  As it turns out, when I stressed the knee with a valgus stress, it opened up by about a centimeter compared to his contralateral knee.  Obviously, the concern was very real at that point and I disqualified him from continuing.  According to the coach, he was completely unaware of the prior status of the injury and he agreed with my decision to end the kid's day.

The most concerning part of this injury is the parent involvement. Granted, I have dealt with my fair share of kids that were neglected or ignored by their parents and minor injuries have gone untreated.  This seemed to be of an entirely different level.  The MCL that was injured was not, by any measure, insignificant.  It was only by luck that this young man didn't end up with a far worse injury by continuing to participate in athletics and not get the injury looked at by a medical professional.  I am not sure whether this school employs a certified athletic trainer or not at this time.  However, this situation is demonstrates why there should be an AT employed at every school.  This young man should not have been participating and this should have been caught much sooner.

New tech to detect TBI

Another new piece of technology is being talked about that may help diagnose serious head injuries.  This new device detects hematomas in the skull as a result of a head injury.  Subdural hematomas, by definition, are classified as moderate and severe traumatic brain injuries.  These are not mild TBIs, commonly referred to a s concussions. 

Mild TBIs are more insidious and involve the process of calcium and potassium ions crossing the cell membranes and causing an energy crisis in the brain.  There is no bleeding to speak of in an mTBI.  Therefore, it must be made clear that this new piece of technology, while it may prove useful, will not rule out mTBIs.  This must be very carefully explained each and every time this piece of technology is purchased and used to test for a head injury.  Otherwise, it will have the same problems that CT scans and MRIs do when emergency room staff erroneously tell a victim of an mTBI that they are fine because the test came back negative.