Physicals 2014-15

The OHSAA dropped another surprise on us for next year and we are scrambling to make sure it works well. This time, the OHSAA decided to move all the documentation of the pre participation physical evaluations (PPEs) online and to ditch the old paper form. What is different this time, is that they made these changes with the caveat that they are available this year, but not required until the 2015-16 school year. Right now, our athletic department is looking at the OHSAA system and their partnership with PrivIT (https://perrypirates-oh.e-ppe.com/index.jspa) and a few other competing options.  More information will be coming shortly, so stay tuned Perry and we will move on this as quickly as possible.

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.

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.

Wow, this could be really big.

Last week, the Columbus Dispatch published a week-long series of articles that looked at the culture of youth sports in America, and specifically, in Ohio.  This series was referenced in by previous post dated August 29th, 2010.  It now appears that in response to this series of articles, that the OHSAA is willing to reach out and provide leadership and oversight to the many recreational programs in Ohio that offer youth sports.  This would be a large undertaking that would require a vast expansion of staff and finances for the OHSAA.  I find this to be very interesting since the article indicates that Governor Strickland would be in favor of looking at this and possibly pushing the state legislature to provide funding for it.  This could be a huge market increase for athletic trainers as well since it only makes sense that we will be called on to assist in the development of programs.  This would not only create a much larger market of jobs for LATs in Ohio, but would also create a big shortage of LATs.  Things could get interesting VERY quickly if this goes well.