Soccer for Schools
January 22, 2016
International soccer has provided me the greatest experience I’ve ever had as a sports spectator. Watching the Boca Juniors come back to win 2-1 in overtime in their historic stadium in Buenos Aires in November 2013 provided me an almost out-of-body experience as the home team fans, decked out in blue and yellow and waving flags, sang their way through the lows and dramatic highs of this match.
Soccer has been called “the beautiful game.” But of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and not all sports fans see beauty in a game that, at its highest levels, has so little scoring and so much flopping, and only one person knows how much time remains in the game. And of course, the sport has been supervised at the highest levels by individuals so corrupt that they make the recent scandals of this nation’s Amateur Athletic Union leadership seem like child’s play.
Soccer is a global game, and we – at the high school level – are not going to change the game at its highest level in the U.S. I don’t really care. I just want a more appropriate game for the interscholastic level.
We already have altered the global game’s substitution rules for the interscholastic level to promote greater participation and player safety. And we use a scoreboard that lets teams and spectators know how much time remains in each half.
To promote more safety, we could implement a football style practice policy that limits the number of practices when heading the ball can occur to one per day during the preseason and to two per week during the regular season.
To promote more scoring, we could implement a basketball style “over-and-back” rule at the midfield line, and also by prohibiting defenders from playing the ball to their own goalkeepers.
The beautiful game has imperfections – at least for our purposes – which we have corrected for our needs in the past and we can do more of in the future without challenging the global juggernaut that soccer has become.
Heads and Heat
August 16, 2012
We are engaged in very serious discussions. They’re not only complicated, with unintended negative consequences possible from what are thought to be positive actions; they’re also a matter of life and death.
The topic is football – the high school sport under most scrutiny today and suffering from the most criticism it’s seen since the 1970s when catastrophic neck injuries spiked, liability awards soared, many insurers balked, and most helmet manufacturers abandoned the business altogether.
During recent years we have learned about the devastating long-term effects of repeated blows to the head; and we’re trying to reduce such hits. We’ve learned that 70 percent of concussions in football result from helmet-to-helmet contact, and we’re trying to have coaches teach blocking and tackling differently and have officials penalize “high hits” consistently and rigorously.
During the past several years we’ve learned that serious heat illness and heat-related deaths are 100 percent preventable, yet nationwide there were 35 heat-related deaths in high school football alone from 1995 to 2010; and we’re promoting practices that acclimatize athletes more gradually than “old school” traditionalists might advocate.
As we simultaneously address issues of heads and heat in football, some coaches may think we’re being overbearing, while many in medical fields say we’re out of date, citing higher standards of the American Academy of Pediatrics, National Athletic Trainers Association and National Federation of State High School Associations, as well as many of our counterpart organizations across the country.
As we consider in-season changes to improve athlete acclimatization and reduce blows to the head, we should be open to making out-of-season changes that work toward rather than in opposition to those objectives. There can be no sacred cows. The topic is too serious.
Ultimately, if we err in the outcome of this year’s discussions about heads and heat in football, it must be on the side of safety, on minimizing risks for student participants. They deserve it and, once again, the sport of football needs it.