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Corporate Care

March 10, 2015

One of the MHSAA’s newest corporate sponsors is arguably one of its most important ever because it will assist the MHSAA’s aspirations to go further beyond the ordinary in promoting student-athlete health and safety.

That new sponsor is Sparrow Health System, and you can read about our new relationship by clicking here.

During the many discussions with Sparrow’s leadership leading up to our partnership, we learned of its membership in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network; and during our review of some of Mayo’s work we reviewed an April 2012 Mayo Clinic article about the risks of concussion in high school football.

The article presented the results of a carefully controlled study of individuals who played high school football in Rochester, Minnesota, during the decade 1946 to 1956.

The conclusion was that those participants did not have an increased risk of later developing dementia, Parkinson’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared to non-football-playing high school males. The study notes that this was the case even though, compared to today, “there was poorer equipment and less regard for concussions and no rules prohibiting head-first tackling (spearing).”

There is no small supply of data that sheds better light on the head trauma hysteria in sports in general and football in particular. We cite such data as a counter-balance, not as a reason to slow the search for safer ways to conduct school sports. Our new sponsorship is evidence that we are increasing our capacity to do much more.

Girls, Boys and Concussions

September 13, 2016

On Monday the Michigan High School Athletic Association announced the major findings from the first year that member high schools were required to report all suspected concussions in the practices and competitions conducted in the 28 sports served by the MHSAA.

It surprises no one that 11-player and 8-player football ranked first and third, with 49 and 34 head injuries per thousand participants, respectively.

And while I’m told it’s not surprising to the experts that girls report more head injuries than boys, it is stunning to me how very many more head injuries are reported for girls than boys.

In sports with identical playing rules, girls reported head injuries with approximately twice the frequency that boys did.

In soccer, girls reported 30 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to 18 per 1,000 for boys.

In basketball, girls reported 29 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to only 11 per 1,000 for boys.

Girls reported concussions at the rate of 11 per 1,000 participants in softball, while boys reported just 4 per 1,000 in baseball.

Only a small percentage of either girls or boys were cleared by licensed medical personnel to return to activity in less than six days, and more than half were withheld between six and 15 days in soccer and basketball. The data suggests that clearance for girls to be returned to activity was slightly more gradual than it was for boys.

Researchers and reporters may find dozens of other observations and curiosities from the summary of 4,452 confirmed head injury reports submitted by the MHSAA’s 755 member high schools for MHSAA-supported sports in 2015-16; but what has the MHSAA’s attention is this giant gender difference.

Is this gender difference accurate, and if so, what are the physiological factors involved that make it so?

Is there a tendency for over-reporting by females, or under-reporting by males, and if so, what are the social and/or psychological factors that may cause this?

Regardless, what does this mean for how coaches work with boys and girls; and what does that mean for how we prepare coaches through the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program?

The MHSAA will take to an even deeper level its nearly 30-year partnership with the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University to explore the issues related to coaches education that have emerged as a result of the first year of mandated concussion reporting for Michigan high schools.

The 2015-16 school year was only a start; it identified some initial themes. The more important value will be realized after the 2016-17 school year, and subsequent school years, when year-over-year comparisons will be made and trends will become apparent that will demand action to further promote the welfare of participants in school-sponsored sports.