US Soccer Federation Making Moves To Decrease Concussions In Youths
Posted: November 13, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Concussions, Player Safety, Soccer, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »Player safety and well being in any sport should take precedence over all other considerations. It’s common sense. However, the latest decision by the U.S Soccer Federation to eliminate heading for children 10 and under has stirred the usually dormant waters of football regulations.
The restrictions came to life as the result of a settlement from a lawsuit that was filed against the leading youth soccer groups last year. A group of players and parents filed a class-action suit citing that player concussions were not being taken seriously by the authorities ruling the game.
The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, requiring the USSF to initiate standard protocols to follow when a player is deemed to have suffered a concussion. However the USSF is taking it a step further and have announced that they will be implementing a widespread initiative aiming to:
- “Improve concussion awareness and education among youth coaches, referees, parents and players”;
- “Implement more uniform concussion management and return-to-play protocols for youth players suspected of having suffered a concussion”;
- “Modify the substitution rules to insure such rules do not serve as an impediment to the evaluation of players who may have suffered a concussion during games”;
- “Eliminate heading for children 10 and under and limit heading in practice for children between the ages of 11 and 13”
In a statement from USSF, CEO and Secretary General Dan Flynn said: “We are proud to be leaders in the area of concussion education and management.” He also informed the public that the “player safety initiative was under way before the current lawsuit was filed”.
Flynn also shed light on the process that led to this decision: “USSF sought input from its medical science committee which includes experts in the field of concussion diagnosis and management, as well as from its technical advisors, to develop a true consensus based program.”
However, in a recent article on CBS News, Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson mentioned that “it’s unclear what degree heading causes concussion and long standing injury.” The Executive Director of Digital Health at Seattle Children’s Hospital, also noted that there is no agreed upon consensus by pediatric experts on whether heading the ball does cause damage to the brain.
It remains to be seen how the US Soccer Federation will be able to implement the initiative. Heading is an integral part of the game, and the notion that limited headers will be allowed per week during practice will be difficult to monitor. Other considerations come up as well: should a striker let a golden opportunity to score a goal pass by if they had reached their limit for the week? Should a defender under pressure, not head the ball back to the keeper and instead risk putting the keeper under more pressure by using their feet? How would players defend a set piece?
There is no arguing that concussion should definitely be addressed and prevented in youth soccer. But the USSF needs to also make sure that youth development is not hampered by the new decision.
Source: “US Soccer Federation Making Moves To Decrease Concussions In Youths.” SportTechie. N.p., 13 Nov. 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
How I Learned to Stop Being a Sideline Coach and Just Enjoy the Game
Posted: October 23, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Volunteer, Youth Sports | Tags: parents, Positive Coaching, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By CATHERINE PEARLMAN
Today’s parents are not just parents. They are coaches and referees and umpires. I don’t mean the kindhearted people who volunteer their time. I’m talking about the parents on the sidelines. As parents, we don’t just watch our children play sports any more. We are in the game.
Lately I have been focusing on how parents behave at my kids’ games. I have seen some ugly behavior. So many moms and dads have no qualms about yelling at umpires who are only behind the plate because no one else volunteered. I recently saw a parent scream at his kid, “Come on! You can do better!” The child was 8.
I never viewed myself as that kind of mother. For the first few years of parenting my husband and I avoided organized sports. Our kids weren’t competitive killers chomping at the bit to play on a team, and we were plenty psyched to keep our weekends together as a family.
Inevitably, though, our kids decided they wanted to get in the game. My son played baseball and basketball. My daughter, who never cared much for sports, was strongly encouraged (by us) to find a healthy physical activity. She chose water polo — a game we knew nothing about.
Three times a week I watch my daughter in the pool and twice per week my son is on the field. After seeing the craziness many parents bring to youth sports, I was determined not to join the insanity. I wasn’t going to yell or advise. I wasn’t going to praise every minute play or action. My plan was to simply enjoy watching them enjoy themselves.
Only I couldn’t. As much as I tried, I still found myself shouting. I wanted my daughter to swim more aggressively. I wanted my son to put his hand behind his back while catching. He should swing through the ball more. She should call for the ball more. Blah blah blah. I became so disgusted with myself that I became determined to sit at a game and say not utter word of advice. But, well, I couldn’t do it. I failed. Repeatedly.
And then, in eight minutes, I was cured.
My daughter’s water polo team had a family polo game, kids against parents, yesterday morning. My husband and I suited up, put on the ridiculous headgear and eagerly jumped in. The old folks warmed up for a minute and tried to stay afloat. Everyone was laughing, giggling, having a fun ol’ time. Then, one second after the initial whistle from the coach, it became clear this was no laughing matter. We had to swim back and forth and back and forth. I could barely keep my head above water while trying to throw the ball. Another player nearly drowned me, appropriately, trying to get the ball (She’s 9). After three minutes I was tempted to tap out.
I didn’t, and wound up playing a whole eight minutes. I didn’t do the team’s requisite 20 laps as a warm up, and I didn’t practice for another hour after that. Eight minutes total. As I clumsily slogged out of the pool, deprived of breath and barely able to pull my own body weight, I realized I had no business telling my daughter what to do in the water (and there is no added benefit to nitpicking my son’s game, either).
My kids are not playing sports for the scholarship potential. There is absolutely no justified reason I need to coach them from the sidelines. The only outcome I can see is that they get so sick of hearing my commentary that they stop playing. I read in a recent survey that 70 percent of kids stop playing sports by 13. I can see why. There is so much pressure even without comments from the bystanders. From now on I am a spectator. I am not there to help my kids get better or stronger or more adept at the game. I am not there to teach the coach or the umpire how to do their jobs. I am simply going to enjoy the game, keep my big mouth shut …
… and stay dry.
Source: Pearlman, Catherine. “How I Learned to Stop Being a Sideline Coach and Just Enjoy the Game.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 Oct. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
Background checks the norm for youth sports leagues like East Lake Little League in Palm Harbor
Posted: September 29, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By ERIK WAXLER
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - Like many youth sports organizations, East Lake Little League in Palm Harbor takes background checks very seriously.
Coaches and volunteers go through a series of checks in a national date base for both criminal background and sexual offenses.
Nicole Wall ensures those checks get done for the league.
“So there’s a two-fold system in place to make sure that we catch as many questionable activities as possible,” she said.
Little League international uses First Advantage to handle background checks. But there are many similar paid services.
“The goal is just to ensure that everyone that interacts with our children at the little league fields is in a position to be a responsible and respectable adult,” said Wall.
We still don’t know what kind of background check if any was done for Tru Elite Athletes and Mentors, a non-profit founded by John Capel, an Olympic track star and former University of Florida football player.
Two of the program’s coaches, Carlos Cleveland and Derrick Atkins, are facing charges for possession and manufacturing cocaine.
And records shows Atkins has served prison time before.
“It’s always a concern that somebody slips through the cracks or found a way to circumvent the system. That’s why working at the league that I do, it’s important that we know each other, that we communicate those concerns and we work through the system that we have in place,” said Wall.
The motto of Tru Elite is, “Our goal is to better our kids in every aspect of life.”
We have yet to hear back from messages left for the organization’s leadership.
Source: Waxler, Erik. “Background Checks the Norm for Youth Sports Leagues like East Lake Little League in Palm Harbor.” WFTS. N.p., 29 Sept. 2015. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
When you disagree with volunteers and refs — do so politely
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Little League, Soccer, Volunteer, Youth Sports | Tags: Positive Coaching, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By BEAU DURE
Parent coaches. Soccer club board members.
These people are volunteers. Be nice. If you disagree with their vision, do so politely.
Referees make a tiny bit of money. Be nice to them, too.
Dealing with referees can be tricky. Through a certain age (in our area, U8), we have no referees, and coaches are responsible for making games fair and safe. Then coaches hand over that responsibility to referees who are often young, inexperienced and timid. These referees might not call the fouls that would have made coaches stop the game and talk to the kids. They might not even understand the simple mechanics of keeping a game running smoothly.
Most youth clubs — and certainly most referees — will tell coaches to say nothing to the refs other than “thank you” after the game. And that should be the goal. But you’ll run into some practical problems.
Some young refs don’t make clear signals — which team takes a throw-in, whether a free kick is direct or indirect, and so on. Many a U9 coach has yelled instructions to his team for how to take a free kick, something not often covered in practice, only to find that the other team is the one taking the free kick. Oops.
The bigger concern is safety. What do you do when a ref isn’t controlling the games, and the fouls are getting harder? What do you do when a kid gets bonked in the head, and you’re caught between obeying your licensing course’s concussion protocols and your club director’s admonition against yelling at the ref?
I’ll give two situations from my experience — one of which I’ll apologize for, one I won’t.
We had an All-Star tournament in which our guys were getting fouled a good bit. In the second game, with our second laissez-faire referee, I had to go out on the field to check on an injured player. I made a sarcastic comment to the ref: “You know, you can call fouls at U9.” He chirped back that they were 50-50 plays. Things went downhill from there. The ref could’ve handled it better, but I could’ve, too. When I surveyed youth referees about what I should’ve said in this situation, the responses ranged from “nothing” to “Pardon me, but this is a little more physical than we’re used to.”
Back in our House league, a hard shot nailed one of my players in the head. Somehow, he didn’t fall. He just held his head and started crying. Play continued. I screamed to stop play. The ref didn’t, the other team didn’t, and our team did. After the other team’s inevitable goal, I went out to check on our team’s injured player, and I yelled to my team not to worry about the goal they had conceded.
I’m not apologizing for the latter. My responsibility for my player’s safety trumps my responsibility to let refs build up their self-esteem.
The ref and I had a good conversation afterward, so all was well. Some of the other team’s parents might’ve thought I was a freak, but they could deal with it.
But that is, of course, a rare situation. Don’t yell at refs over offside calls. They’re going to get those wrong. And it’s often tough to see who played the ball before it went out of play for a throw-in. No harm will come from getting those plays wrong. Give the poor kid or well-intentioned adult a break.
So to sum it up: Safety first; shut up otherwise.
Source: Dure, Beau. “Youth Soccer Insider: When You Disagree with Volunteers and Refs — Do so Politely.” SoccerAmerica. N.p., 07 Sept. 2015. Web. 07 Sept. 2015.
Athletic trainers talk safety at practice
Posted: August 1, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By ERIC RUSSELL
The official football practice season is still quite young in South Carolina. High school athletes in the Palmetto State got back out on the field on Friday for the first practice of the season. However, in other states, practice had already started, and in some cases, had tragic endings.
A player in Indiana died earlier in the month at football practice, and on Wednesday, a 16-year-old in Tennessee died after a practice where the heat-index reached 109 degrees.
At several of the local schools on Friday, athletic trainers were on hand to help assure the safety of the athletes returning to practice. In the case of Silver Bluff and Midland Valley these trainers came from the Georgia Regents Sports Medicine Outreach Program, which provides certified athletic trainers to recreational, high school and college sports teams.
“Heat-wise, obviously we talk to them about hydration. That’s your No. 1 defense against heat-illness, making sure you’re properly hydrated,” Cooper said. “Coming out here on little to no food or little to no fluids is setting yourself up for disaster. We preach pre-hydration. They have to start before they get to practice.”
Cooper’s coworker in the program and Silver Bluff athletic trainer Christina Haupt, who head coach Al Lown called a huge help to have on the sideline, added that being dehydrated is like a domino effect when it comes to rigorous practice during a season.
“If they’re out here from Monday to Friday and Monday they already come out here dehydrated, on Tuesday it just spirals downward. By Wednesday or Thursday, they’ll be nauseous, dizzy and throwing up,” Haupt said.
Passing on information like that is a vital part of why Cooper said it’s important for every school to have an athletic trainer on staff, not just someone who shows up on Friday night for games. The reality of the situation, however, is that many schools can’t afford to have the type of athletic trainer Cooper refers to.
Cooper offered up some helpful tips for those athletes in the area that may not have the trainers on staff to educate them. She said athletes should eat carbs before practice. Carbs provide the energy for pre-practice. She also said it’s important to take in a protein after practice to help muscles recover. In addition, having a fruit and vegetable as part of a post-practice meal is advised.
Another big part of keeping the athletes safe are the various regulations put on practicing. The South Carolina High School League provides safety recommendations to all high school coaches and athletic directors to make them more aware of how to handle situations.
“Obviously all teams don’t have trainers, so you cant force them into doing anything, but these are adults out there leading students. We expect them to conduct their practices in a way that will keep athletes safe,” said Bruce Hulion, who is in charge of sports medicine and health related issues at the SCHSL.
At football practice, athletes gradually add layers as the first few days go by in order to allow the players’ bodies to get acclimated. On Friday, teams were only allowed to wear helmets. No team in the state is allowed to practice in full pads until Wednesday.
While regulations now exist for many safety risks in youth sports, it took a while for some of those rules to be put into place officially. One of the biggest health issues in the game of football has been concussions, and South Carolina was the second to last state to pass a youth concussion law in 2013.
Both Midland Valley and Silver Bluff take extra steps to assure the athletes safety by performing baseline neurocognitive tests on each athlete which gives the cognitive levels of an uninjured athlete as a tool to aid in recognizing potential concussions or brain injuries.
Cooper said laws and regulations have been especially important in Aiken, where there are many schools in rural areas where the closest medical facility is a great distance away.
“The laws and rules make everybody accountable. In the state, all of the coaches have to take a concussion safety test, and they have to complete education on a yearly basis,” Cooper said. “If I were a football coach, I wouldn’t want to be making the medical decisions for my athletes, but unfortunately sometimes they may be put in a position where they have to be involved with the medical aspect out of necessity. That’s where it becomes important to have the laws and training.”
Student athletes who suffer from a concussion must go through a seven-step return-to-play protocol before returning to action. They must follow up with a physician who is trained in evaluating concussions and then must pass each step symptom free. Once an athlete gets to the fourth step of the return-to-play protocol, the trainer conducts another neurocognitive test and compares that to their baseline test. At that point, the trainer has that information coupled with the sideline concussion assessment done at the time of injury. All of that information is then sent to a physician to look over all of the testing and the athletes progression. Trainers do not allow athletes to go back onto the field of play until they have a signed SCHSL form from an authorized medical proffesional. The SCHSL stipulates that only a medical doctor or doctor of osteopathic medicine licensed to practice in South Carolina can release an athlete diagnosed with a concussion to return to competition.
Once an athlete is returned to contact, they have to complete a full practice without any symptoms of the concussion before getting approved to play in a game.
“You have to monitor them closely. Kids can sometimes not realize that they’re having symptoms because there are so many symptoms associated with concussions that can mimic other things,” Cooper said. “Sitting them down and educating them about the dangers of it and educating the parents is a pretty lengthy process. It’s definitely worth it though. You only get one brain.”
Source: Russell, Eric. “Athletic Trainers Talk Safety at Practice.” Aiken Standard. N.p., 01 Aug. 2015. Web. 01 Aug. 2015.
The Importance of Being Proactive When Coaching Children With Allergies
Posted: July 6, 2015 Filed under: Allergies, Coaching, Emergency Action Plan, Player Safety | Tags: allergies, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By ELAINE KELLOGG
In recent years, there has been more and more talk about children with allergies, whether these allergies are minor or life threatening. This chatter is for good reason, as there has been an extreme increase in the number of people who are affected by allergies since the beginning of the millennium, though no one has an explanation as to why. Research has estimated that “up to 15 million Americans have food allergies… and this potentially deadly disease affects 1 in every 13 children” 1. This is an important statistic for any teacher, coach, or extracurricular program leader who has the responsibility of taking care of a large number of children to remember. When a teacher or coach is assigned a group of children to teach and look after, they need to have a thought in their mind about the potential of having a child with allergies and the severity of the situation that they could be dealing with.
One serious challenge when dealing with children who have allergies is the fact that children cannot always communicate with a teacher or coach about the allergies that they have. As someone with a younger brother who has experienced severe food allergies since birth, I know that before my brother was old enough, he did not even fully understand what having an allergy meant or what he could and could not eat. This can be extremely scary for parents of a child with allergies because they live in fear that one day their child may be offered something to eat by someone who is unaware of the allergy, and their child will not understand that they cannot eat it. Unknowingly, someone can offer his or her child something that could potentially kill the child if not treated immediately.
The first thing that we can do to help alleviate this scary situation is to educate those who are in charge of children about the different kinds of allergies and the possible reactions that could occur as a result of these allergies. Secondly, these people in charge also need to be well informed about the specific allergies that a child has before they assume responsibility for that child. Even in a seemingly harmless situation, a child could have an unexpected reaction if a teacher or coach is uninformed and unaware. Take a youth soccer practice for example: A boy’s mother decides to bring snacks to practice one day, not knowing that any allergies exist for any player on the team. The snacks that she brings are peanut butter cookies, which her son is able to eat so she doesn’t think twice about bringing. The coach has not been informed of any peanut allergies on the team (or he has briefly, but forgotten) and thinks nothing of the snacks the mother has brought. A little boy on the team, unknowing about the ingredients in the cookies, takes a bite and goes into anaphylactic shock. Now lets take the story one step further. The coach, now realizing that one of his players is experiencing an allergic reaction does not even know whether this boy has an Epi-pen or where it would be located.
This scenario is the exact scenario that causes so many parents to worry about their child who suffers from allergies. Most parents will tell the coach or teacher at the beginning of the season or school year if their child suffers from allergies and what these allergies are specifically, but it is so easy for someone to forget if they are not reminded. Additionally, if a coach or teacher knows about an allergy but cannot locate an Epi-pen, then knowing about the allergy does them almost no good. In order to prevent a situation like the one played out earlier, it is crucial that coaches, teachers, and anyone who is in charge of children has a sense of what they are dealing with when it comes to allergies, whether it be food, seasonal, or insect related allergies. They need to know who has them, what they may be, and how to react if something does go wrong and a child has a reaction. It has to be a top priority for them to make sure they know who is allergic to what so that they can always be looking out for the children who cannot eat certain things. By being aware and prepared, coaches and teachers can put parents at ease knowing that their child’s allergies are a concern and a priority, and that they will be in good hands in the event that they have a reaction.
1 foodallergy.org
Working Together to Prevent Injuries in Youth Sports
Posted: June 30, 2015 Filed under: Allergies, Asthma, Chronic Illness, Coaching, Concussions, Dehydration, Emergency Action Plan, Football, Heat Stroke, High School, Lawsuit, Little League, Player Safety, Soccer, Uncategorized, Volunteer, Youth Hockey, Youth Sports | Tags: Concussions, Education, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »We’ve all been there: getting hit or knocked down during a game and saying “I’m fine!” instead of taking a seat on the bench and determining whether or not we are really injured. No player wants to let the team down or feel weak for admitting that he or she is hurt and in need of a break, but this mentality can actually hurt a player even more down the line. According to safekids.org, a youth sports injury that results in a visit to the emergency room occurs once every 25 seconds. This adds up to about 3,397 children in the hospital every single day. Safe to say, youth sports injuries are not uncommon and need to be taken seriously. That number would be even higher if more players were willing to admit their pain and take the necessary steps to find out how to heal it, but this would at least prevent further damage or repeated injuries of the same kind from happening. 54 percent of athletes said they have played injured, and 42 percent of athletes have admitted to “hiding or down-playing an injury during a game so they could keep playing”, according to safekids.org. This practice of hiding injuries needs to be curbed so that children stop repeatedly playing on an injury, and putting themselves in even more danger.
At the beginning of the season, players need to be told by the coach to come forward and be honest if they are feeling less than okay and ground rules should be set to agree on how the team will approach injuries. It also becomes the parents’ responsibility to report to the coaches in the event that their child has admitted to feeling pain, or has been diagnosed by a doctor and given specific instructions about how to treat an injury. Similarly, the coach needs to be open with the parent and inform them that their child has been injured during a practice or a game so that the parent can take the necessary steps to keep their child healthy and safe. Considering that 62 percent of organized sports-related injuries occur during practices, according to youthsportssafetyalliance.org, it is clear that many injuries occur when the parent is not around to witness them, making communication necessary.
While the responsibility does lie on the player, we cannot always trust that children will take an injury as seriously as they should or that they will be open with both their coach and parent and admit to one. According to safekids.org, less than half of coaches are certified and know how to prevent and recognize sports injuries, while 53 percent have said they’ve felt “pressure from a parent or player to put an athlete back in the game” after an injury. To make the playing field a safer place, coaches need to be certified or, at the very least, aware of the health issues of their players, just as parents need to focus on their children’s health rather than their goal count.
What all of this comes down to is communication. The gaps between players and parents, players and coaches, and parents and coaches leave room for more harm. A player who tells his parents that his ankle hurt during the last practice and gets a note from the doctor that he should skip gym class should not be playing in their soccer game the next day. The player might not want to tell their coach about this for fear of being benched, but the parent should recognize the importance of resting for their child’s safety and keep the coach informed. Similarly, if a player was complaining of dizziness during practice and had to sit out, the coach should report this to the parent so that they can go to a doctor or keep an eye out for their child. If a coach or a parent doesn’t know there is something wrong with the child, then they have no way of fixing the problem. Where communication stops is where injuries can go from bad to worse. The more aware that parents and coaches are about a player’s injuries, the more help and support they can give. When players, parents, and coaches work together, athletes are kept safer and the team becomes stronger as a whole.
Will This Safety Program Be As Common as a Helmet?
Posted: June 18, 2015 Filed under: Allergies, Asthma, Chronic Illness, Coaching, Concussions, Dehydration, Emergency Action Plan, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »Michael Buono has been coaching youth sports for years, and like many parents and volunteers, he has no medical training. But he’s still the first one to help a child if they get injured on the field. Does the child have any pre-existing conditions? Are they diabetic? Asthmatic? Who’s to know.
So he developed SafetyTag, a program that creates player safety files for each child, displaying their unique health conditions. Why is little Johnny gasping for air? Peanut allergy? Asthma? The coach can know in seconds by looking at Johnny’s SafetyTag file — which says that his inhaler is in his blue backpack.
Buono said that the program is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliant (likely because the parents fill in the information themselves and medical professionals aren’t the ones sharing and using it.) With 26 million kids playing youth sports, he sees a big market.
“We’re hoping leagues mandate it in the future,” said Buono, “just like a cup and a mouthpiece.”
Source: Shelly, Jared. “Will This Safety Program Be As Common as a Helmet?” Philadelphia Magazine. N.p., 18 June 2015. Web. 18 June 2015.
Pope Francis Calls for Youth Sports Shake-Up
Posted: June 16, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, High School, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: children, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By CLARK POWER
This week, Pope Francis will release a hard-hitting encyclical letter on the environment that is creating a stir in and out of the Catholic Church. Francis does not shy away from controversy when human rights and welfare are concerned. Overlooked, however, among Francis’s more daring public stances is his advocacy of youth sports as a means of respecting children’s dignity and of helping children to climb out of poverty.
Just a month ago, along with 80 scholars, coaches, athletes, and Church leaders, I participated in the international seminar, Coaching: Educating People,” sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Laity. In his opening charge to the Seminar, Pope Francis challenged sports leaders throughout the world to rethink the role that youth sports can and should play in the lives of children.
Emphasizing the critical influence that coaches have on their players, he directed sports leaders to open their organizations to the children who are typically excluded and who can benefit the most from being on their teams.
Pope Francis’s charge comes at a critical time for youth sports organizations in the U.S. The inequalities in youth sport are growing and mirror those in society. For those children who have the financial resources to play, over 70 percent will drop out of sports by the time they get to high school. Their number one reason is that they are not having fun. Many other children, especially the poor and disabled, do not even have an opportunity to be on a team.
Aware of the temptation to sacrifice children’s welfare to achieve competitive success, Pope Francis spoke passionately about the need for sports administrators and coaches to “preserve the value and nature of sports as games.”
He warned about the “perversion” of sports and the exploitation of athletes by the pursuit (fueled by economic gain, nationalism, and personal ambition) of success at any cost. Pope Francis believes that sports should be play and are meant to be fun for all children. His message is a counter-cultural one in the U.S., where the passion to “win” leads some coaches to turn youth sports into adult-driven work. Even at the youngest levels, it is common to find children being cut from teams or relegated to the bench because a coach decided that they weren’t “good” enough.
Like the renowned Developmental Psychologist, Jean Piaget, Pope Francis understands that children’s play can have profound educational value. In his charge, Pope Francis explained that under the direction of competent coaches, sports can develop children socially, morally, and spiritually, as well as athletically. Good coaching must be child-centered and developmentally sensitive. For example, Pope Francis pointed out that at the earliest stage of youth sport, coaches should encourage children to take risks, face difficulties, and build confidence in themselves and others. At a later stage, coaches should help adolescents to become good teammates, putting the common good first. Just like other child care professionals, like doctors, psychologists, and teachers, coaches need a “solid formal education. Educators must be educated,” he insisted.
As someone involved in youth sport coach education for over a decade now through the Play Like a Champion Today sports education program at the University of Notre Dame, I know coach education can be time-consuming and costly. Sadly, the leaders of some youth sports organizations assume that any well-meaning adult who knows how to play a sport can coach children. The majority of youth sports coaches in the United States still remain untrained while many other coaches receive only a bare minimum of instruction through an on-line course or cursory pre-season meeting.
Pope Francis threw down the gauntlet stating that sports organizations must “pay due attention to and invest the necessary resources in the professional preparation, both human and spiritual, of coaches.” Those of us, who have reaped the benefits of play sports in our youth, owe the next generation a comparable and even better experience. Pope Francis has pointed out the way.
Source: Power, Clark. “Pope Francis Calls for Youth Sports Shake-Up.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 June 2015. Web. 16 June 2015.
Concussion clinic helps educate coaches on keeping young athletes safe
Posted: June 14, 2015 Filed under: Coaching, Concussions, Football, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: bills youth football, Concussions, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports Leave a comment »By TAMI HOEY
TEMPE, AZ (KPHO/KTVK) -
Concussions are a serious and scary reality for many young athletes. But organizers of a clinic held Saturday in Tempe hope to educate coaches about concussions and sports safety.
The clinic was hosted by USA Football Master Trainer Wayne Voorhees. Youth and high school football coaches participated in the interactive player safety clinic at the Arizona Cardinals Tempe Training Facility.
The clinic focused on the Heads Up Football program, an initiative led by USA Football.
During the clinic, Voorhees guided participants through a series of drills to reinforce proper tackling and blocking mechanics that focus on reducing helmet contact. Other topics? Concussion recognition and response, and instruction on proper helmet and shoulder pad fitting.
The coaches will then teach Heads Up Football to their youth leagues and high school coaches, players and parents.
About Heads Up Football:
It a comprehensive approach to a better and safer game, encompassing USA Football’s accredited Level 1 Coach Certification Course; Heads Up Tackling and Heads Up Blocking techniques; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concussion recognition and response protocols; sudden cardiac arrest protocols; heat and hydration; and instruction on proper helmet and shoulder pad fitting.
About USA Football:
Indianapolis-based USA Football is the sport’s national governing body, leading the game’s development for youth, high school and other amateur players. The independent nonprofit partners with leaders in medicine, child advocacy and sport to establish important standards rooted in education. USA Football advances coaching education and player skill development for safer play and positive experiences through athletics.
Source: Hoey, Tami. “Concussion Clinic Helps Educate Coaches on Keeping Young Athletes Safe.” Concussion Clinic Helps Educate Coaches on Keeping Young Athlete. N.p., 14 June 2015. Web. 14 June 2015.
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