Posted: December 7, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Concussions, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: Concussions, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
Males who participate in amateur contact sports, such as high school football, are more susceptible to developing the degenerative brain disorder chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a new student done by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
The findings, published in the December issue of Acta Neuropathological, show that 32 percent of the males who had participated in contact sports growing up showed signs of CTE as chronicled by the Post-Bulletin in Rochester, Minn. Because CTE can only be identified after a person has died, the study was based on brains posthumously donated for research. Among the contact sports listed were “football, boxing, wrestling, rugby, basketball, baseball.”
The study is the first to look for CTE in non-professional athlete using diagnostic criteria from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, according to Dr. Dennis Dickson, the study’s author and a Mayo Clinic neuropathologist.
“(This) work is groundbreaking,” Dickson said in a news release. “The frequency with which (we) found CTE pathology in former athletes exposed to contact sports was surprising.”
The release said the 66 males who had participated in contact sports growing up, 32 percent showed CTE when the brain tissue was examined. None of the 198 brains examined from those who had not participated in contact sports in their youth showed CTE. That included the 66 women.
Said Kevin Bieniek, who led the research team: “The purpose of our study is not to discourage children and adults from participating in sports, because we believe the mental and physical health benefits are great. It is vital that people use caution when it comes to protecting the head. Through CTE awareness, greater emphasis will be placed on making contact sports safer, with better protective equipment and fewer head-to-head contacts.”
Source: “New Study Finds Evidence of Brain Injury in Men Who Participated in Contact Sports as Youths.” USA Today High School Sports. N.p., 07 Dec. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.
Posted: December 6, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Dehydration, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: dehydration, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
By LAUREN WEILER
You’ve heard it again and again — drink water instead of juice, soda, or sugary sports drinks, and drink plenty of it. While the typical water-consuming mantra has always been to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day (totally 1.9 liters), you’ll actually be needing a bit more than that to stay on top of your hydration needs. The average man should be drinking around 3 liters, or 13 cups of water a day to stay hydrated according to Mayo Clinic, and this amount can even increase depending on your daily activity levels. You should also consider all of the different ways you lose fluids in a day through breathing, perspiring, and going to the bathroom, so replenishing what you lose is incredibly important in maintaining optimal health. While it may seem excessive and chore-like to constantly consider your water intake, having enough fluids in your body is vital for proper organ function, metabolic health, hunger control, and achieving healthy energy levels.
If you find that you’re fatigued halfway through your workout or your workday, you may want to reach for a glass of water over coffee or caffeine-laden sports drinks. Whether you realize it or not, you may be dehydrated, and dehydration can lead to fatigue, says Authority Nutrition. Athletes in particular are prone to becoming more dehydrated than others — it is not uncommon for athletes to lose anywhere from 6 to 10% of their water weight through sweat during their workouts, and performance levels can suffer when athletes lose as little as 2% of their water weight.
Going into a workout without the proper amount of water in your system can lead to changes in the way your body regulates temperature, a lack of motivation to complete all of your reps, and the illusion that your workout is a lot more difficult than it really is in both a physical and mental sense. Because muscle is roughly 80% water, you need to give water back to your muscles when they’re hard at work, as this will keep your reps consistent and your body prepared for workouts that are longer and more difficult.
While water is great for keeping energy levels high during your workout (and outside of the gym as well), staying hydrated is also the key to maintaining that your organs are functioning as well as possible. Men’s Fitness states that water speeds up the metabolism and flushes out toxins from your body, ensuring that your organs can function with efficiency. Even the simple act of keeping your mouth and nose from drying out is from proper water intake, and processes like digesting food, circulating the blood, and lubricating and cushioning joints are supported by staying hydrated.
Drinking water also helps protect the brain, the blood, and the spinal cord while keeping these sensitive areas moist. And don’t forget about the benefits that water has for your memory and productivity — drinking a glass of water while doing office work can give you the extra boost of energy and focus that you may need to complete tedious tasks.
Everyday Health also explains how proper hydration keeps your insides working optimally by assisting in the excretion of waste through urinating, perspiring, and defecating. Your kidneys, your liver, and your intestines utilize water to flush out waste, and staying hydrated can even lead to relieving symptoms of constipation. With that being said, water is also great for digestion in general — when you consume soluble fibers, water can help the fibers dissolve easily, which eases the digestion process. Because your digestive system needs your saliva and water to assist in breaking down foods and dissolving nutrients for your body to absorb and benefit from, it makes sense that drinking water can ease this process and assist your body in the food and particle breakdown.
Water also greatly benefits the skin, your body’s largest organ. Certain toxins can cause inflammation, which can directly affect the clarity of your skin. If you’re looking for a quick way to clear an acne breakout, consider drinking a few more glasses of water a day to reduce the risk of any inflammatory skin disorder. And, because your digestive health and your skin health are linked, you may drink more water to help with your digestion and experience clearer skin as an added bonus.
Though you may be reaching for low-calorie protein shakes and calorie-controlled portions to reach your weight loss goal, Greatist says that water is a key component to staying trim and feeling fuller for longer. Adding a few more glasses of water a day to your daily diet can help keep you satiated and boost your metabolic rate — not only will you be cutting back on calories, but you’ll also give your metabolism the extra boost it might need. According to this study, drinking a little over two cups of water extra a day can increase your metabolic rate by 30% for up to (or slightly over) an hour. You should also consider what time you’re drinking your water as well — drinking water a half hour before your next meal is appropriate so that you feel satiated before beginning to eat, which will lower your calorie intake overall.
Though the best way to stay hydrated is from drinking water from the glass, you can also eat more foods that naturally contain more water. Health states that nearly 20% of your daily water intake comes from solid foods anyway, so consider adding more cucumbers (96.7% water), iceberg lettuce (95.6%), radishes (95.3%), tomatoes (94.5%), watermelon (91.5%), and strawberries (91%) into your diet. If you’re finding it difficult to get more of these fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet, then consider adding in cucumbers, lemons, or herbs to your drinking water for additional digestive health boosts and anti-inflammatory effects.
Having trouble keeping up with how much water you’re drinking? A general rule of thumb is to drink a full glass of water as you’re eating each meal and between every meal that you have. If you rarely feel thirsty and your urine is light yellow in color, you’re most likely pretty well-hydrated, and though it is possible to experience health complications associated with drinking too much water, most healthy adults who eat an average diet will not need to worry about this ever becoming an issue.
Source: Weiler, Lauren. “The Health Benefits of Drinking Enough Water.” The Cheat Sheet. N.p., 06 Dec. 2015. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.
Posted: December 3, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Football, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports, youth sports death |
By DIANE HERBST
This story is part two of a three-part PEOPLE series on high school football deaths. The mother of late football player Tyrell Cameron also spoke to PEOPLE about losing her son – and forgiving the player involved in the fatal collision on the field.
For freshman Tyrell Cameron, it was a fractured neck after being hit during a punt return. Ben Hamm took a hit to the head. The same was true for Kenny Bui and Andre Smith.
Cam’Ron Matthews felt woozy before he collapsed on the sidelines. Evan Murray also felt woozy, this following a hit to his stomach, while Luke Schemmcollapsed on the sidelines soon after he got hit a final time.
Within hours or days of their respective collisions or tackles, all seven of these high school football players were dead.
In all, 13 high school and one youth football players have died since July 1, to according to Doug Casa, Ph.D., the chief executive officer of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, which researches sudden death in sport.
Seven of the deaths have been linked indirectly to the sport, with causes including cardiac conditions, heat stroke and exertional sickling (a medical emergency occurring in athletes carrying the sickle cell trait), says Casa, director of athletic training education, department of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut.
“Nearly all non-traumatic deaths in sport,” says Casa, “are preventable.”
On July 7, for example, 14-year-old Collin Kelly, a sophomore at Pike High School in Indiana died one day after passing out at a conditioning practice. The Marion County Coroner’s Office determined that Kelly died of heatstroke suffered at the practice.
“You can’t think of a bigger tragedy than a heatstroke death because all you need is ice water and a tub,” Casa says. “Imagine parents finding out their child dies and it was a $150 tub and ice and water that the school had, it’s the difference between their child living and dying.”
The deaths related to on-field injuries make Robert Cantu, M.D., medical director for the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill “very concerned personally,” he says.
How a Second Concussion Can Prove Fatal
Cantu, a professor of neurosurgery at the Boston University School of Medicine, thinks that several of the direct deaths – those related to on-field play – sound like they may be second impact syndrome: acute, sometimes fatal brain swelling that occurs when a second concussion is sustained before complete recovery from a previous concussion.
It is “a preventable condition and it would be a real tragedy if that were really the situation,” Cantu says.
An astounding 70% of high school athletes with concussions played despite their symptoms, and 40% reported that their coaches didn’t know of the injury, according to a 2014 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. Many players don’t reveal injuries, says Cantu, since they know it may keep them from playing or disappoint their teammates.
However, “it’s only as important as life and death,” Cantu says of a football player participating with the symptoms of concussion. (A concussion is an injury to the brain that produces a temporary loss of brain function with symptoms including dizziness, lightheadedness, confusion, headache and vision changes. Usually, nothing will be seen from an imaging test.)
“You are setting yourself up for the second impact syndrome, which has a 50 percent mortality rate if it happens,” Cantu says. “And, unfortunately, it has an almost 100 percent morbidity rate meaning even if you survive, you survive with neurologic deficits.”
Senior wide receiver Kenney Bui of Evergreen High School in Burien, Washington, had suffered a concussion one month before a game on October 2, for which a doctor cleared him to play. In the fourth quarter, when Bui seemed dazed, an ambulance took him to the hospital, where he died three days later. An autopsy found that he died of blunt force trauma to his head.
With great concern about concussions and the safety of football, one school board in Missiouri disbanded its football program earlier this year.
As shocking as these deaths are, however, the rate is far lower than its peak in 1968, when 26 high school players died from on-field play, according to a recent NCCSIR report.
The past ten years have had between zero and 8 deaths per year directly attributable to playing the game, per the NCCSIR report. In 2013, for example, eight players died from injuries sustained on the field, a rate of .73 deaths per 100,000, while last year five high school and one college player died, a rate of 0.45 per 100,000.
Why Is This Happening to High School Players?
Some 1.1 million high school students are playing football as compared to 100,000 playing at the college and pro levels, according to the NCCSIR. Yet even with those huge numbers of players in high school, a 2007 study in The American Journal of Sports Medicine found that the incidence of catastrophic head injuries in football is dramatically higher at the high school level than at the college level. The researchers concluded that, “an unacceptably high percentage of high school players were playing with residual symptoms from a prior head injury.”
Cantu, an author of the 2007 study and who published 2012’s Concussion and Our Kids, says the still-developing brains of high school athletes makes them more vulnerable to catastrophic head injuries as compared to players in the NFL.
Yet he notes that it’s the younger players who hit the most, “which is crazy,” he says.
“The coaches of those younger players say ‘you have to teach them,’ but you don’t have to teach them by bashing heads. They way practice is conducted and how frequently you hit needs to change.”
Another factor contributing to these deaths is the lack athletic trainers (highly-trained medical personnel) at all practices and games, says Casa.
The Importance of First Responders
Despite high school football accounting for the vast majority of catastrophic injuries, just 37 percent of high school have a fulltime athletic trainer, and only 50 percent have a trainer at all practices and games, according to a recent study in the Journal of Athletic Training.
“What you do in the first 5 or 10 minutes will dictate if the athlete lives or dies,” says Casa, of the study’s authors. “We can’t just call an ambulance and put our hopes on EMS or an EMT, we can’t put our hopes on the ER doc. The initial care needs to be resolved on the field.”
The most common causes of death in high school athletes, according to the Korey Stringer Institute, include heat stroke, cardiac arrest and head, neck and spinal injuries.
“If you look at indirect deaths, the deaths are almost always preventable,” Casa says. “If an AED [automated external defibrillator] is placed within a minute, 90 percent of cardiac cases survive. With heat stroke, if you cool a person down properly, 100 percent survive.”
Casa, an author of the NCCSIR study, notes that while direct deaths have seen a decrease since the 1960s, “we are in the middle of a four decade rise in indirect deaths.
“When it comes to cardiac, heat stroke and sickling death, it is without question getting more dangerous to play football,” he says.
“But those are preventable, it’s not necessarily the sport of football, it’s not because two people run into someone on a field, it’s what we’re doing in terms of conditioning and not having proper education for coaches, they’re not doing smart things in their training.”
Pre-Existing Conditions
“Any death of a young athlete is a tragedy, it is emotionally heart rending and absolutely horrible,” says Dr. Doug Zipes, a cardiologist and distinguished professor, Indiana University School of Medicine, who helped write the American Heart Association’s recently updated guidelines for athletes with heart problems.
There has been a debate among experts on the extent of screening athletes for cardiac problems, on top of their required physical examinations, he says.
“Some places add an electrocardiogram or other things but adding those things has not been cost-efficient and they lead to false negative and false positive diagnosis,” he says.
“The electrocardiogram can look normal and someone can still have heart problems, or the electrocardiogram can look abnormal and someone doesn’t have heart problems. The issues are complex.”
Zipes calls for AEDs at all practices and athletic events. “Knowing we have difficulty identifying the athlete at risk, let us be prepared to respond to that athlete who does have sudden cardiac death and the best response is a defibrillator,” he says. “And if that is applied to an athlete within minutes, we can save that life.”
Cantu bemoans the current system of finding the cause of death with football players who die after on-field play, as it is up to a medical examiner, not a neuropathologist, who is highly trained in determining causes of death on the field.
In light of the high school football deaths this year, two congressmen last week introduced legislation that would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to take some action.
“We desperately need a mechanism that would allow experts to examine each of these fatalities so we could be absolutely about what caused them,” Cantu says, adding that even one death, “is too many.”
Source: Herbst, Diane. “13 High School Football Deaths This Season – PEOPLE Talks to the Experts About Why, And What Can Be Done to Help.” PEOPLE.com. N.p., 03 Dec. 2015. Web. 03 Dec. 2015.
Posted: December 3, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Concussions, Football, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: Concussions, player safety, Safety Tag, youth football, Youth Sports |
By UZMA SAMADANI
I read with great interest the recent report on the call for elimination of football from high school argued by Drs. Stephen Miles and Shailendra Prasad (“U doctors call for no football in schools,” Nov. 22). They take issue with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) position statement that tackle football should not be eliminated from youth sports. The AAP position statement instead proposes a series of measures to make football safer — including limiting contact practices, rule changes, improved protective equipment and neck strengthening, among others.
There are several reasons that the AAP statement is reasonable in arguing for continued contact sports, with efforts to render them as safe as possible.
The first reason is that it is impossible to legislate all risk-taking behaviors out of childhood and adolescence. The adolescent brain is not fully developed, and thus not as rigid in its signaling as the adult brain. It is still developing and is wildly creative compared with the more inhibited adult brain. Despite any legislation, children are biologically more impulsive, less restrained and more inclined to take risks.
Football is on the riskier end of the spectrum of sports, but still is less risky than skiing, snowboarding, skateboarding, equestrian sports or bicycling. If we are going to legislate all risk-taking behaviors in children, we should probably begin with those that are statistically most dangerous, rather than those in the middle.
Ultimately, if we do not let our children play football, they may choose to skateboard off the roof. This type of activity is what they are biologically programmed to do.
The second reason not to eliminate tackle football is that it is not entirely clear that elimination of risk-taking behaviors from childhood is in the interest of our society. With football, children learn to assess risk based not only on their own capabilities, but also on the capabilities of their teammates, who protect them and work for their mutual interests. This capacity for rapid risk assessment and plan execution, relying on teamwork and assessment of evolving challenges, may serve our children well in their later professional lives.
Without childhood risk, there might not be adult risk-taking behaviors — no astronauts, explorers, entrepreneurs, fire rescue personnel or surgeons, for example. Helicopter parenting and elimination of all risk may breed a generation of cowards unfit to face the challenges of the next century.
A third reason for the AAP position, clearly indicated in its statement, is that there is not substantive scientific evidence indicating that subconcussive or even concussive impacts in youth have deleterious long-term health effects. The vast majority of children will recover from a concussion without any adverse condition. The greatest risk factor for dementia in American society is vascular insufficiency due to hypertension, obesity and diabetes — all far more prevalent in children who do not exercise. Dementia is also more common in women, who are less likely to have played contact sports.
Within the spectrum of brain-injury-inducing activities contemplated by the developing and unpredictable minds of American youth, football represents an extremely tiny fraction of where risk actually resides. Focused efforts on elimination of football detract from the true preventable causes of brain injury — specifically, gun violence, motor vehicle collisions, and drug or alcohol abuse. Such efforts are also contrary to elimination of the greatest scourge to the health of our modern society — obesity due to inactivity.
The question we should be asking is not whether we should ban football, but how we can encourage more children to be active in the sport of their choice, played as safely as possible.
The AAP has it right — make football safer and get the kids out there playing. Children who want to play football should be encouraged, and those who do not should be counseled to seek alternative exercises that are hopefully at least as beneficial.
Uzma Samadani is Rockswold Kaplan Endowed Chair for Traumatic Brain Injury Research at Hennepin County Medical Center and an associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of “The Football Decision — An exploration into every parent’s dilemma on whether or not to let a child play contact sports,” which will be published in January 2016.
Source: Samadani, Uzma. “Counterpoint: Call to Ban Football Collides with the Facts.” Star Tribune. N.p., 03 Dec. 2015. Web. 03 Dec. 2015.
Posted: December 2, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Player Safety, Soccer, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
CHICAGO (Via U.S. Soccer) – The United States Soccer Federation today introduced a player health and safety program called Recognize to Recover. The first-of-its-kind program aims to reduce injuries in soccer players of all ages and promote safe play by those on and around the field.
Recognize to Recover was developed with the help of medical experts and will provide coaches, players, parents and referees with information, guidance and educational materials to improve the prevention and management of injuries.
“Recognize to Recover will lead to better awareness and understanding of player health and safety initiatives and strengthen the role parents, players, coaches and officials play in preventing, protecting and addressing injuries,” said U.S. Soccer Chief Medical Officer George Chiampas. “While U.S. Soccer is launching the framework of Recognize to Recover today, this is just the beginning as more information around specific areas of focus will be rolled out in the coming months.”
Information about head injuries, including new guidelines regarding concussions, will be included in the program, along with other important player health and safety topics such as heat-related illness and dehydration, heart health, nutrition and injury prevention.
“As the national governing body of our sport, U.S. Soccer is committed to being the leader in lasting change that has a positive impact on the game,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati. “We created Recognize to Recover to elevate player health and safety and bring players, coaches, parents and officials together to help ensure safe play at all levels of our sport.”
As part of Recognize to Recover, U.S. Soccer recently presented overall concussion guidelines that include rule changes that will reduce the possibility of head injuries while preserving the nature of the game. Players suspected of a concussion will be given plenty of time for evaluation by a health care professional without penalty or loss of a substitute. U.S. Soccer is also recommending that heading the ball be prohibited for children 10 and under, and to limit the activity to practice only for children ages 11 to 13.
“We know that the vast majority of concussions occur when there is contact between players trying to head the ball,” said Chiampas. “Whether that is head-to-head contact, elbow-to-head or their head hitting the ground while challenging for the ball in the air; by reducing the number of those aerial challenges to head the ball, we believe we will decrease the incident of concussions.”
“While the science on head injuries is still developing, these rule changes and recommendations are based on the advice of the U.S. Soccer medical committee. As we continue to learn more, we’ll have the flexibility to adapt to the findings and make the appropriate changes.”
As part of Recognize to Recover, U.S. Soccer will be working directly with current and former players to spread the message about the importance of player health and safety. More information about those player ambassadors will be provided in the near future.
Source: “U.S. Soccer Announces ‘Recognize to Recover’ Player Safety Program.” Soccer Wire. N.p., 02 Dec. 2015. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.
Posted: November 30, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Concussions, Football, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports, youth sports death |
By JASON SCOTT
Two youth football players — one a high school student from Kansas and the other in Ohio who was just 9 years old — died this week during football activities.
Luke Schemm, a 17-year old player at Wallace County High in Sharon Springs, Kan. Collapsed on the sideline after scoring on a two-point conversion play. He was airlifted to a Denver hospital, where he was declared brain dead. He was taken off life support late yesterday.
Referees reportedly didn’t see Schemm take contact to his head or neck. But David Schemm, Luke’s father, said that Luke had suffered brain trauma, which caused swelling and shut off blood flow.
Schemm was a standout athlete at Wallace County High. He started for four years on the school’s football team, played on a state championship basketball team, and a state ranked high jumper. He had plans to attend Kansas State University in the fall.
Wyatt Barber, the 9-year-old player, collapsed during a routine practice session. A preliminary autopsy revealed that he died of a heart issue.
Barber’s team was having a non-contact practice session when he fell to the ground.
“During the process of stopping and taking a break, the young man collapsed,” Meigs County Sheriff Keith Wood told WSAZ. “They started doing CPR on him immediately and contacted 911. When we got there, they were working on Wyatt and trying to get him revived, diligently trying.”
Barber was rushed to the emergency room, but was pronounced dead a short time later.
“To have a death like that is just a terrible thing to see happen,” Wood said. “We are a family here and we’re very closely connected in our community.”
Source: Scott, Jason. “Two More Deaths in Youth Football - Athletic Business.” Athletic Business. N.p., 15 Nov. 2015. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.
Posted: November 28, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Concussions, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: Concussions, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
By VICKI HALL
BANFF, Alta. — Canada’s Sports Minister Carla Qualtrough says Rowan’s Law – a concussion bill named after a 17-year-old who died in Ottawa after being injured during a high school rugby game – is a step in the right direction.
Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod tabled the bill in the Ontario legislature on Wednesday with rare all-party support. Second reading is scheduled for Dec. 10.
“I am keenly aware of the concerns being voiced across our sport system about our athletes’ health regarding the impact of concussions,” Qualtrough said in a news release Friday. “I share the desire for a responsible, coordinated approach to the treatment of concussions in order to ensure the safety of every athlete.”
Qualtrough’s comments come on the heels of a four-part Postmedia series that detailed Canada’s haphazard approach to concussion management. In this country, rules vary wildly from province to province or city to city — even in the same sport.
Source: Hall, VickI. “‘Concussions Are a Serious Issue throughout Our Sport System:’ Federal Government Throws Support behind Rowan’s Law.” National Post Concussions Are a Serious Issue throughout Our Sport System Federal Government Throws Support behind RowansLaw Comments. N.p., 28 Nov. 2015. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.
Posted: November 27, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
By EMILY SWEENEY
James Loftus found himself in a difficult spot when his son Henry asked if he could play Ultimate Frisbee this fall. There was one problem: Henry was already signed up to play soccer on a travel team, and James had volunteered to be the assistant coach.
“He played soccer since he was in kindergarten,” said Loftus, who lives in Newton. “He enjoys it but never seemed to be passionate about it. This year he asked, ‘Can I play Frisbee instead?’ ”
Loftus and his wife looked around for an Ultimate Frisbee league and found one in Lexington. Henry joined, Loftus gracefully stepped down from his soccer coaching position, and since then, 13-year-old Henry has become hooked on his new sport, so much so that he even joined an Ultimate Frisbee club at his middle school.
Why does Henry like Ultimate?
“He says ‘we don’t have refs and there’s a lot more running around,’ ” Loftus explained.
Ask any parent: Kids have more athletic opportunities to choose from today than ever. Soccer. Lacrosse. Swimming. Flag football. Gymnastics. On any given weekend you can find preschoolers at T-ball practice, learning yoga poses, playing ice hockey, even participating in Spartan Race obstacle courses.
But with more options come more questions for parents. When are kids ready to play organized sports? How do you find a quality youth program that they’ll enjoy? Is it all right to specialize in one sport? When is it OK to let kids quit?
Active kids do better in life, according to a recent report by the Aspen Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Physical activity is linked to academic achievement, and sports can have a positive impact on young people’s self-esteem, goal-setting, and leadership skills.
Yet national participation in youth sports has actually declined in recent years, the report says, as organized opportunities have shifted toward those with the most talent, financial resources, or commitment. (Read: parents/guardians who can chauffeur them to practices, games, and tournaments.)
Just 40 percent of children ages 6 to 12 played team sports on a regular basis in 2013, down from 44.5 percent in 2008, according to the report, which cited statistics from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
Football has seen the steepest decline, but participation has also fallen in baseball, softball, soccer, and basketball. Meanwhile, more kids are playing racquetball, ice hockey, lacrosse, Ultimate Frisbee, and squash.
So, what’s a family to do?
First of all, parents should be smart consumers, said Ann Marie Gallo, a professor of physical education at Salem State University. She gave a recent talk on youth sports in Lexington, where she is founder and longtime director of Summer’s Edge Day Camp.
Before signing up, parents should make sure the sport suits their child’s needs and abilities. “I think the first priority should be teaching children how to move,” she said.
Recreation centers and YMCAs often offer a variety of sports and activities for young children, such as yoga and climbing walls. Gallo also recommends Ultimate Frisbee as “a nice introductory sport.”
Before signing their child up for a team, Gallo advises parents to “go down to a park and watch and see” what goes on at a typical practice.
What to look for? Gallo recommends activities that keep children involved and engaged. Is a ball provided to every child or pair of children, so that everyone can gain experience? Or is a pack of kids chasing after one single ball? She said young children can benefit from small games (two vs. two or three vs. three) on smaller fields.
And look for coaches who act like mentors and teachers.
Gallo recalled a time when she was watching her godchild play in a basketball game and the coach yelled at her team: “You’re playing like this is recreational basketball!”
The comment made little sense to Gallo. “She’s 12,” she said. “It’s supposed to be fun.”
Gallo cautions against specializing in one sport too early. Training year-round in one sport puts young athletes at risk for chronic overuse injuries, she said.
“More is not always better,” she said. “You risk burnout if you start too early.”
Kids quit sports for a variety of reasons: boredom, fatigue, the coach yells too much, the family can’t afford it. Gallo recommends that parents check in with young children and ask them: “Are you enjoying this? Do you like this?”
When talking sports with your young athlete, instead of asking “Did you win?” shift to more open-ended questions like: “How did you play today?” That question will spark conversations about the child’s experience, she said, which is far more important than the numbers on the scoreboard.
Burnout doesn’t seem like much of a problem for the kids playing Ultimate Frisbee in Lexington. Since the town’s Recreation and Community Programs Department partnered with the Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance to offer youth Ultimate Frisbee in 2011, the sport has continued to grow in popularity. This year, additional age groups were offered.
Dean Ranzo, who has been playing Ultimate since 1981, coaches the under-10 division, which includes kids as young as 7. He describes it as “an awesome” sport that combines “athleticism, good attitude, and fun.”
Ultimate Frisbee is the game of choice for Gillian Epstein’s children. Her 13-year-old son has been playing for a few years, and this year her 9-year-old daughter signed up as well.
“I appreciate that Ultimate is relaxed, all-inclusive, and very positive,” she said in an e-mail. “We were thrilled that the program agreed to take younger ages this summer, and my daughter loves it — it was the only team sport she was willing to consider.”
Loftus, the erstwhile soccer coach from Newton, admits to knowing little about Ultimate before his son adopted the sport.
“But it looks like fun,” he said, “and he really seems to enjoy it.”
|
2007 |
2009 |
2014 |
% change |
| Football (Tackle) |
1,883,000 |
|
959,000 |
-49.1% |
| Baseball |
5,436,000 |
|
4,846,000 |
-10.8% |
| Basketball |
5,797,000 |
|
5,413,000 |
-6.6% |
| Football (flag) |
N/A |
1,402,000 |
1,086,000 |
-22.5% |
| Ice Hockey |
299,000 |
|
434,000 |
45.1% |
| Lacrosse |
221,000 |
|
349,000 |
57.9% |
| Soccer (outdoor) |
5,802,000 |
|
5,072,000 |
-12.6% |
| Softball (Slow-pitch) |
1,457,000 |
|
874,000 |
-40.0% |
| Ultimate Frisbee |
352,000 |
|
439,000 |
24.7% |
| Racquetball |
182,000 |
|
308,000 |
69.2% |
| Squash |
N/A |
27,000 |
166,000 |
514.8% |
Source: Sweeney, Emily. “How to Navigate Today’s Wide World of Youth Sports - The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. N.p., 27 Nov. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
Posted: November 26, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Concussions, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: Concussions, player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
By VICKI HALL
In a special, four-part series, Postmedia News explores the issue of youth concussions: from the pressure felt by athletes to “power through” and take one for the team, to the need to balance safety against fear, to the patchwork of policies across the country that leaves young athletes at risk.
CALGARY — Concussion, the blockbuster movie of the holiday season, is billed as one man’s ‘David and Goliath’ fight against the NFL.
CALGARY — A mother’s intuition told Kelley Korbin her daughter was hiding the truth about the concussions she suffered as an up-and-coming skier on the B.C. moguls team.
But with her eyes trained on the next competition, Sophie McGregor refused to consider hanging up her boots to protect her brain.
“She was making light of it,” Korbin says from West Vancouver. “She didn’t have any big falls. She just had a few little hits of her head on the snow. By that point, it didn’t take much.”
Despite incapacitating headaches and persistent nausea, McGregor kept skiing over bumpy mogul fields. All the while, her mother gently probed and incessantly worried about a bright, bubbly girl who suddenly seemed anything but.
“I said I was fine, but I was forgetting entire days and living with serious headaches,” says McGregor, who admits to self-medicating with up to eight extra-strength Tylenols a day to manage the pain. “I definitely shouldn’t have been skiing, in retrospect. But at the time, I was like, ‘I can just power through this.’ My coach was being super-cautious and kept asking me how I was doing. But I just kept on lying.”
Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith, is the Nigerian neuropathologist who discovers chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players. His discovery, and his fight to raise awareness, pitted him against the most powerful professional sports organization in the world.
The brains Omalu examines explains so many things. Like why Steelers great Mike Webster ended up sleeping in bus stations, blowing all his money after he retired — forgetting he ever had money — and using a taser to zap himself to sleep. Why Vikings linebacker Fred McNeill — so smart he began law school during his last NFL season — started to lose his memory in his early 40s and eventually would be fired from multiple jobs. Why Chicago Bears Pro Bowler Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest rather than in the head when he killed himself at 50, leaving a note that said: “I think something is seriously damaged in my brain. Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank.”
The potential reaction to the film scares Dr. Pierre Fremont, chair of the Canadian Concussion Collaborative, an umbrella organization that includes the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Paediatric Society.
“I fear it’s going to create another huge wave of fear,” says Fremont, past-president of the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine. “People who have kids playing football might think, ‘My kid plays football and had two concussions in three years that were properly managed, so he’s going to die after going crazy in 20 years.’”
He worries panicked moms and dads will pull their kids out of sports such as hockey, football and soccer to save them from the ravages of CTE — and that this, in turn, will lead to a generation of inactive, overweight children.
When concussions are properly managed, Fremont says, there is usually no cause for long-term concern. CTE is a late complication of multiple improperly managed concussions.
But given a 2014 poll released by the collaborative suggests 59 per cent of sports organizations in the country don’t have a concussion protocol in place, fear is understandable.
Fremont sees the film as a warning to Canada, a message that it’s on the clock to ensure every sports organization in the country — from AAA Midget hockey in Quebec to the local skiing club offering lessons on a bunny hill in Edmonton — has a mandatory concussion protocol that is reviewed annually. This needs to be done quickly and it needs to be done correctly, he says, learning from other jurisdictions like the U.S.
Without that, he worries not only about the kids who continue to play sports, but about those who won’t.
“We need to do something about concussions before fear destroys sport participation in kids,” he says. “Only a minority of kids will be excited about golf or swimming laps in the pool. They want to play on sports teams; they want to compete against other kids. We want kids to be active instead of gaming or getting fat. It’s so important for their health, so they don’t develop chronic disease.”
No one would ever send their child on to a football field or hockey rink without a helmet. A concussion protocol — or a detailed plan outlining the steps to safely return to school or sport — is every bit as essential.
Studies show concussions are three to six times more likely to be detected in an environment with a protocol in place, Fremont says. Further, an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of concussions resolve totally within seven to 10 days — or sometimes longer, in the case of children and teenagers — so long as the brain is given proper time to rest, according to the 2012 Zurich Consensus Statement on Concussions.
Without protocols in place, concussions are more likely to be missed.
“We’re missing a huge amount of minor concussions that most of the time will, by luck, resolve without consequences,” Fremont says. “But a few of those are those kids who will get a second hit that will constitute a very bad episode of concussion that could have been prevented by early detection. That’s what needs to change.”
A mandatory concussion protocol was among the 49 recommendations of a coroner’s inquest into the death of Rowan Stringer, a 17-year-old Ottawa girl who died after back-to-back concussions sustained while playing high school rugby in 2013.
A youth concussion bill prompted by that inquest was introduced Wednesday in Ontario’s provincial parliament. The bill calls for a committee to develop an action plan based on those recommendations. They have one year to report. In Quebec, a working group on sports-related concussions was struck in early 2014. Although the group has submitted a report to the Minister of Sports, Education and Leisure, recommendations have yet to be made public. In B.C., Moira Stilwell introduced a private member’s bill in 2011 calling for youth concussion legislation, but it died on the table. She hopes to introduce a similar bill again.
Federally, Sport Canada has formed a working group on concussions and head injuries, with representatives from federal, provincial and territorial governments. Asked about a deadline for a report, a spokesperson said “this information will be made available in due time.”
Sport Canada also is working with the provinces and national sport organizations to create educational tools such as seminars and workshops for coaches, trainers, administrators and parents.
“The harmonization of educational initiatives and management protocol tools are the top priorities,” spokesman Roger Maalouf wrote in a statement to Postmedia. “Education and community-level awareness are vital to prevent injury on the playing field.”
Further, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked Sport Minister Carla Qualtrough to work with her health counterparts on a national strategy to raise awareness for parents, coaches and athletes on concussion treatment.
In the meantime, sports organizations across the country are governed by a patchwork of policies — or none at all. In 2014, the Canadian Concussion Collaborative released a poll of 44 national and provincial organizations that represent concussion-prone sports. Of those surveyed, just 41 per cent had concussion management protocols in place. Rules vary wildly from province to province or city to city — even in the same sport.
The Saskatchewan Soccer Association, for example, introduced a detailed concussion policy in 2013. One province over, the Manitoba Soccer Association said in October that it is still hammering one out. In B.C., the provincial association says it’s finalizing a formal concussion protocol but warns, even when it’s adopted, enforcement will trickle down to youth districts and, ultimately, coaches, parents and officials. There’s just no way for an organization based in Vancouver to police concussion management in soccer leagues from Fort St. John to Cranbrook to Tofino.
“It’s trying to work with our membership to create something they can then monitor,” said spokesman Peter Lonergan. “With the province being so big, that is our challenge. We’d be lying if we said we could be at every game, every weekend.”
At the national level:
• Hockey Canada has a comprehensive concussion policy — available digitally — that details a six-step protocol for players with a suspected concussion. The policy calls for at least one official on each team to take an online player-safety course that teaches, among other things, the rules for handling possible head, neck or spinal-cord injuries. The policy is national in scope, but day-to-day enforcement lies with the provincial branches and local minor hockey associations. “If everybody respects the rules, it’s a really safe game to play,” says Todd Jackson, senior manager of safety and insurance for Hockey Canada.
• Snowboard Canada’s concussion policy goes a step further, requiring all athletes 15 and older to undergo baseline neurological testing before the start of training every season.
• Curling Canada is in the process of developing a concussion protocol that is slated for presentation at the association’s AGM next summer. Brad Gushue, the 2006 Olympic gold medallist, cracked his head on the ice in the fourth end of a game last month. He went to hospital, received seven stitches, and returned to action in the seventh end. The next day, he woke up with concussion-like symptoms.
• When asked if it has a concussion policy, the Canadian Lacrosse Association said in a written statement it is in the process of reviewing concussion protocols given recent research on the topic. It refused to specify whether a current policy exists.
• Rugby Canada follows the “Recognize and Remove” policy launched by World Rugby in January 2014. “If there’s a suspicion of a concussion, the player is removed and we ask questions later,” says Dustin Hopkins, manager of national development for Rugby Canada. “It’s not a matter of trying to make a diagnosis around the field.” Medical clearance is required for a player to return to action.
• Ringette Canada hopes to have a concussion policy — complete with a return-to-play protocol — approved at the next face-to-face meeting of the board in January. In the meantime, the national federation is encouraging coaches to take an online course and follow the concussion protocol found on the Parachute Canada website. “It’s not like we’re just sitting here going, ‘Our policy is not in place at this point,’” says Natasha Johnston, executive director of Ringette Canada. “We recognize the importance of the issue.”
The United States is far ahead of Canada when it comes to concussion protocols. All 50 states have enacted concussion laws outlining the steps that must be taken when a young athlete suffers a head injury. The legislation protects the respective governments from massive lawsuits — common south of the border — should a young athlete die from repeated concussions.
But is legislation the way to go? Should Canada be following the American lead?
Proponents of Rowan’s Law say such legislation will protect all young athletes by forcing sports federations, leagues and teams to enact formal concussion protocols that educate participants and mandate the steps to return to play.
But Fremont isn’t so sure. In terms of protecting children, he says the results are muddy at best. No one is policing sports teams to ensure athletes and parents are educated about the dangers of concussions. No one is inspecting the files to ensure every concussed participant presents a doctor’s note before returning to game action.
“In every state, the literature is starting to show that it’s very nice to have that (law) — it’s been useful to increase the awareness by coaches — but not so much athletes and parents,” Fremont says. “The bottom line is they have no way to implement it. Before we too rapidly decide to implement similar laws in Canada, we should at least ask the question, carefully look at the literature from the American experience, and decide if we want to duplicate or innovate.”
Fremont, for one, prefers a distinctly Canadian approach.
Provincial education ministries could enact policies to cover concussions suffered at school. Currently, Ontario is the only province in the country to have such a law in place. Enacted in 2015 following the death of Rowan Stringer, it applies only to students injured while playing for a school team.
National sports organizations could introduce similar rules and require all their members to follow them. The respective governments could make approved concussion management protocols a condition of funding.
All sides agree: Education is essential to prevent another tragedy.
“It’s time to go back to the earliest level of sport, grassroots, where daddy is the coach on Saturday morning,” Fremont says. “That’s where it starts.”
The main goal of every concussion policy should be to educate kids, parents, coaches and teachers about the signs, symptoms and potential severity of concussions and leave the decision-making to physicians, preferably those with training in traumatic brain injury,” says Dr. Michael Ellis, medical director of Winnipeg’s Pan Am Concussion Centre.
In Manitoba, Ellis is a vocal advocate of standardized concussion protocols in and out of school to protect young athletes across the province, regardless of what sport they play.
“I don’t think parents or coaches should ever feel like they have to be doctors,” he says. “Parents, teachers, coaches — this is not a responsibility that should be put on their shoulders. The only thing they should be expected to do is if they worry about or suspect a concussion, they have to pull the trigger on getting the kid out of the game, and hopefully the concussion protocol will take care of the rest.”
Without firm policies in place, emotions can override reason. Just as youth often choose to keep playing, coaches can feel conflicted when their star player goes down in a big game. Parents can urge their children to play through an injury for a chance at a championship or individual glory.
“I’ve had parents come in to the clinic who have confidence in what we tell them and ensure that their child takes all the necessary steps to return to their sport safely,” says Siobhan Karam, a physiotherapist at Toronto’s Sports Medicine Specialists clinic who has experience in concussion therapy.
“But I’ve also treated athletes with complex and repeat concussions, with very visible symptoms, and their parents will insist that their child is just fine. Even the worst concussions possible, and it’s the kid’s seventh concussion, and the parent is like, ‘Oh no, he’s fine.’ And the kid is about to throw up, and his eye function is completely off.”
To protect kids and teenagers, Ellis says, any concussion protocol must include mandatory medical clearance before young athletes can return to sport.
Until Canada comes to a point where all sports have concussion protocols in place, Dr. Charles Tator advises parents to be cautious.
“There are still lots of positives to be taken from team sport,” says Tator, a neurosurgeon at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre of Toronto Western Hospital. “I’m not in favour of parents withdrawing, but I do encourage parents to be very vigilant. You can’t drop off your kid and leave, and you can’t allow the coach to preach violence and aggression. That is up to the parents to prevent. Parents have to be vocal, they have to be there, they have to be watchful, and they have to realize their kids’ safety is in the hands of the coach.”
As much as Fremont would hate to see parents pull their kids out of contact sports after watching the movie Concussion, he says they should walk away from any league without a protocol in place.
“They should ask, ‘Did you establish a good understanding of concussion within your organization? Can I trust if my kid has a concussion that it will be detected early and managed properly? Do you have a protocol?,” he says.
“If they don’t, parents should not have their kids involved in an environment with a high risk of concussion and no plan. Kids should not play contact football on a football team that does not have a concussion management protocol. It makes no sense.”
Source: Hall, Vicki. “Head Shots: Concussion Policy Needed to Protect Kids Who Play Sports - and Those Who Are Afraid to.” National Post Head Shots Concussion Policy Needed to Protect Kids Who Play Sports and Those Who Are Afraidto Comments. N.p., 26 Nov. 2015. Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Posted: November 25, 2015 | Author: admin | Filed under: Football, Player Safety, Youth Sports | Tags: player safety, Safety Tag, Youth Sports |
By KELLY MCEVERS
We know more than ever about concussions, the permanent brain damage of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the other physical risks of football.
Yet so far this year, at least 19 students have died playing football, according to the University of North Carolina’s National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.
Cam’ron Matthews played safety on the Alto, Texas, varsity football team. The 16-year-old died after a game in October.
Laurie Gould Photography
Though participation is slowly declining, football is still the country’s most popular high school sport. Over a million high schoolers played last season.
Researchers at UNC have been tracking football-related deaths since the 1960s. Director Kristen Kucera describes two main tallies: deaths caused directly by football, like a broken spine or brain trauma, and those that are indirect like heat stroke or sudden cardiac arrest that occurred during a game or practice.
The good news is that there are fewer fatalities than there used to be. Back in the 1960s, around 30 or 40 players died each year. Then came a steep decline thanks to new safety measures: a standardized helmet that must be certified for use in a game; a rule banning headfirst tackling; and improvements in athletic medical care.
But instead of dropping to nil, the number of football-related fatalities leveled off in the 1990s. Since then, a persistent average of about four or five football players have died each year as a direct result of playing their sport, along with an average of 10 or so indirect fatalities.
When asked why the numbers have leveled off instead of reaching zero, Kucera hesitates. “That’s a great question,” she says. “That’s what we’re working really hard to figure out.”
One player who died this year was Cam’ron Matthews, a 16-year-old from Alto, Texas.
On a Friday night in November, one month after Matthews died, the Alto Yellowjackets bounded out of their black-and-yellow inflated tent through an artificial cloud of mist and onto the field. There was no trace of sadness. They were focused on winning.
Alto is a small town of about 1,200, and on Friday nights it feels like everyone comes to watch the boys play. Some parents like Misty Collins get there early to stake out a spot on the metal bleachers. Collins was there Oct. 16, when Matthews told the coach he felt dizzy, then collapsed on the sideline.
“We just all prayed,” she remembered. “We prayed that he was going to be OK, but the good Lord took an angel that was down here on Earth.”
That’s how people who knew Matthews talk about him. The 6-foot safety was one of the team’s captains. He was the only junior elected.
“He’s our number one, that was his jersey number,” Collins said. “He was an awesome student, and very polite, and anything that came out of his mouth was ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am.’ He was an awesome guy.”
After he collapsed, medics took Matthews to a hospital in East Texas, where he died the next day.
Doctors told the family he likely died from a burst brain aneurysm, though they’re still waiting for an autopsy to confirm that.
A fatal aneurysm could be related to football or other vigorous activity, according toRobert Cantu, a neurosurgeon in Concord, Mass., who specializes in football injuries. That activity could cause an aneurysm, which is a weak area in the wall of an artery, to burst, which in turn could cause dizziness, collapse and death. Aneurysms can run in families, but are “very uncommon” in 16-year-olds, Cantu says.
Matthews’ friend and teammate Keenan Johnson said it’s been hard to get back in the groove. But instead of falling apart, he says, the team has pulled together.
The Alto Yellowjackets take the field on Nov. 13, a month after Matthews died.
Lauren Silverman/NPR
“It hurts that he’s not here,” Johnson says. “He’s one of my closest friends, and we worked out all summer. But we dedicate it to him. We’re trying to win the state championship for him, be number one for him.”
In the playoff game in November, the Yellowjackets faced a longtime rival – the Groveton Indians. And Matthews was on the sidelines, in a way. His number 1 jersey was perched on a wooden hanger. His sister Paige sat in the bleachers at the 50-yard line. The team won 63 to 14.
Parents rushed onto the field to thank head coach Paul Gould. Gould says he’s proud of how the players are handling their teammate’s death.
“I think they’re doing probably about as good as possible, but this is something they’re going to deal with for the rest of their lives,” he says.
Gould knows parents are concerned about injuries associated with football, especially concussions. This year the governing body for high school sports in Texas says it will start counting concussions for the first time.
This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics made new recommendations about safety and urged players to consider “whether the benefits of playing outweigh the risks of possible injury.” The AAP is urging the expansion of non-tackle leagues like flag football and calling for athletic trainers to be present during practices and games. Only 37 percent of high school nationwide have a full time athletic trainer on staff.
Two University of Minnesota professors have gone even further, calling for theelimination of tackle football programs from public schools altogether.
“Everybody wants their kids to be safe. Everybody wants their kids to be OK, and I understand that,” Gould says. “We try to make sure we coach kids to hit the correct way. You try to make your kids as safe as possible, because that’s our job.”
After Matthews died, Gould says not a single parent pulled their kid from the team. He hopes what happened doesn’t fuel negative ideas about the game.
“I can say this: What football teaches kids for the rest of their life, in my opinion, is priceless,” Gould says. “I mean, it teaches you to deal with things. This situation is definitely teaching our kids to deal with things as they move forward.”
Mississippi defensive back Roy Lee “Chucky” Mullins tackled Vanderbilt fullback Brad Gaines on Oct. 28, 1989. The tackle paralyzed Mullins from the neck down. He died two years later.
Bruce Newman/AP
But players who have been involved in a fatal play say the experience will haunt them forever.
Back in 1989, Brad Gaines was a star running back at Vanderbilt University. Then came October 28, a date Gaines will never forget. It was a must-win game at Ole Miss in Oxford.
Vanderbilt received the opening kickoff and drove down the field. On third and goal at the 12-yard line, Gaines and the Commodores lined up for a play designed to pass the ball to Gaines.
The ball snapped and his quarterback threw the pass. An Ole Miss linebacker was close on Gaines’s tail.
“As soon as the ball reaches me, reaches my hands …bang!” Gaines remembers. “Just a fantastic hit from the back, and breaks up the pass, and [the linebacker] just makes a great play.”
Gaines headed back to the sideline, then noticed the linebacker hadn’t yet gotten back up. At first, Gaines thought this was another of football’s routine injuries. A sprained ankle, maybe. But five minutes went by. Ten minutes. The linebacker was still lying on the field, surrounded by trainers and medical staff. Maybe a broken arm, Gaines thought.
Finally Gaines realized it was something more serious when a helicopter ambulance arrived to take the linebacker to Memphis, about 70 miles away.
Later he learned the linebacker’s name — Chucky Mullins — and his injury: Mullins had broken his spine and could not move any of his limbs.
“I had the doctor tell me sometime later that when they got him stabilized, when they got him into surgery… his neck looked as if you dropped a grenade down his shirt.”
Gaines was horrified.
“The only thing I knew was you strapped up your cleats before practice, you went out and played and it was fun. I didn’t know that there was this other part to this game,” says Gaines, now 48 and living in Nashville, where he works in health care.
“In an instant, he goes from being a world-class athlete in the best conference in America, and now he’s laying on his back, and he’ll never move again. He will not be able to brush his teeth. He will not be able to wash his hair. He will never be able to feed himself. And I just felt like I was the cause of that.”
Against the advice of his coach and a psychologist, Gaines decided to visit Mullins in the hospital. He was scared to death, petrified, he says, and not prepared for what he saw when he walked in: a much skinnier Mullins, with “cords, tubes, things hanging out of him.”
Mullins’s guardian was there, and told Gaines that Mullins had something he wanted to tell him.
Gaines leaned over to hear Mullins whisper through his tracheal tube: “It’s not your fault.”
“And oh my goodness,” Gaines remembers. “It’s tough saying it now, but I tell you, it was a total selfless act on his part. I don’t know if I could have done that.”
Gaines and Mullins remained friends for the following year and half, until Mullins died of complications in 1991. Every year still, he drives to Mullins’s grave on October 28, the anniversary of the game, and on Christmas.
Today, Gaines regularly receives phone calls from players like him — players, often teenagers, who make a routine play or tackle that ends with an opponent’s death. Gaines is one of few people they can turn to who actually understands what they’re going through, and he’s happy to help.
“What I learned from Chucky Mullins was that selfless nature. It’s not about me. It’s not about Brad Gaines. I can help people. So if somebody calls me and asks me that’s going through something like this, or needs some advice, or counsel, then that’s my duty.”
Gaines thinks the game is safer today, thanks to things like better concussion protocol and the new kickoff positions that mean fewer kickoff returns. But he still calls himself a football purist. He says he couldn’t tell his 11-year-old son not to play football.
“I know that it’s not the game’s fault. I know that. And I know that there are going to be injuries,” Gaines says. “But when you love the game, you accept that. You accept that there could be consequences like this.”
Source: McEvers, Kelly. “Deaths Persist In Youth And Student Football Despite Safety Efforts.” NPR. NPR, 25 Nov. 2015. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.
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