Logo

Dangerous Plays

February 26, 2013

The MHSAA’s fourth health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on competition rules.  It intends to locate the most dangerous plays in each sport and to try to reduce their frequency.  For example:

  • We know that kickoff returns, punt returns and interception returns – plays in the open field with a change in direction – are the most dangerous football game situations.

  • We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.

  •  We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.

  • We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.

  • We know that ACL injuries in female basketball players and volleyball players is near epidemic and wonder if there is equipment or conditioning that can be mandated or recommended to save our players from what are serious and sometimes career-ending injuries.

We can make changes ourselves – through MHSAA sport committees – for the subvarsity level, but our committees can only make recommendations to national rules committees for varsity level play.  Over the next four years, we will be asking our sport committees to give more time to the most dangerous plays in their sport – identifying what they are and proposing how to reduce that danger.

Fantasy Land

March 8, 2013

Advocating at the national level for unachievable ideals not only diminishes the importance of those achieving reasonable accomplishments at the grassroots level, it also threatens the future of organized sports for the masses; and few organizations in a position to know better are doing as much to create these unintended consequences as the National Athletic Trainers Association.

It is a NATA-driven “Youth Sports Safety Alliance” that has developed a six-page manifesto for youth sports, including NATA’s “Secondary School Student Athletes’ Bill of Rights” which is mostly beyond the means of youth sports sponsors, and has marched to Capitol Hill to urge the federal legislature’s action to pursue those goals, among which is the conveniently unstated objective of advancing job opportunities and security for athletic trainers themselves.

MHSAA surveys indicate that, conservatively, fewer than 20 percent of Michigan high schools and junior high/middle schools have a full-time certified athletic trainer on staff.  In fact, only a minority of schools think such a full-time position is necessary, given other cheaper options available to them in the form of contracted services of medical groups and the volunteered services of many other medical professionals.  An even smaller minority has the means to pay for a full-time certified athletic trainer, given all the cuts in state aid to schools; and many schools – urban, suburban, rural and remote – wonder where in their communities they would find a certified athletic trainer if such were mandated everywhere.

NATA’s earlier recommendations in the extreme for acclimatization of players at the start of the football season have already resulted in a state law in Maryland that football coaches there criticize for leading to a less safe sport now that they have less time to teach technique and prepare players for first-game contact.  In theory, NATA’s notions are nice ideas; but in practice, they are less safe for the participants.  And anything that is less safe for the participants not only endangers today’s players, it also jeopardizes the future of the game.  Which, by the way, does nothing to enhance employment opportunities for trainers.