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The Safe Play Game Plan

April 21, 2015

On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.

For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.

For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.

For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.

For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.

This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.

This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.

This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.

Wrestling’s Next Big Thing

August 13, 2013

“The next big thing” is what marketers often seek.  But it’s what school sports administrators usually dread because the “next big thing” is routinely a problem.

And so it is with the sport of wrestling which, at the high school level, has had an admirable record of solving the big issues that have threatened the sport’s existence.
 
School-based wrestling addressed unhealthy practices for weight loss, first with rules about what could not be done – e.g., rubber suits were banned from practices – and then with rules about what must be done, including a weight management program.

Twenty years ago, MHSAA member schools became one of the early adopters of policies and procedures that include the training of skinfold assessors who are employed to do measurements of all wrestlers, from which each wrestler learns his/her lowest allowed weight and the rate at which he/she may descend to that weight and still remain eligible to compete. These rules, and a nutrition education program, saved interscholastic wrestling from much public criticism and, possibly, from continuing drops in participation.

In addition, the Wrestling Committee has been unique among MHSAA sport committees in recognizing that a season that is too long is neither healthy for nor desired by student-athletes; and the committee has reduced the length of season and number of matches. All of this, combined with the MHSAA team tournament, have greatly increased the sport’s popularity among both participants and spectators.

But in spite of all this, the sport of wrestling is “one communicable skin disease outbreak from extinction,” according to those discussing the state of high school wrestling at a national meeting in June. We’ve already seen an outbreak lead to the suspension of all interscholastic wrestling for two weeks in Minnesota during the 2006-07 school year.

To avoid this next big thing, the rule makers have banned taped headgear, because tape can’t be properly cleaned. The NFHS Sports Medicine Advisory Committee, which is the MHSAA’s advisory body as well, is urging schools to mandate that all participants shower or perform an antiseptic wipe-down after every match.

The MHSAA will make this issue a point of special emphasis in its online, print and face-to-face communications this fall. In addition, an excellent free webinar is provided by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. Click here for the webinar.