concussions

MomsTeam Founder and Publisher, Brooke de Lench, talks about the difficult decision to pull a son with a history of multiple concussions and learning disabilities out of high school football and lacrosse, and says parents should have a right to expect when they entrust their children to a sports program that it will take reasonable precautions to protect them against harm. In other words, parents have a right to expect that the entire team to whom they entrust their children's safety — including the national governing body for the child's sport, the state association, the athletic or club director, the athletic trainer (if there is one), and especially the coaches - are part of the concussion solution, not part of the problem.

The National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association (NAERA)has announced that it will no longer accept football helmets for reconditioning and recertification which are more than 10-years old.  The policy, adopted at the group's annual meeting, will become effective at the start of the reconditioning season on September 1, 2011, as many schools have already paid for their helmets to be reconditioned for use this fall.

Pop Warner amended its football and spirit concussion safety rules effective September 30, 2010 to provide for the immediate removal of a player suspected of having suffered a head injury or concussion and no return to play without the approval of a licensed athletic trainer or medical professional who is not the parent/guardian of the player.

In June 2011, USA Hockey approved a rule banning body checking in youth hockey until the Bantam level (13-14 year olds) first proposed at the organization's winter meeting January 22-23) in Colorado Springs, Colorado..

As a full-contact sport that takes place on the ice with fast-moving players equipped with sticks, pucks and skate blades, ice hockey's risk for injury is always high. Concussions and many other serious hockey injuries are, however, preventable. In addition to altering the way they play the game, players can take prevention measures both before and during the season.

With the support of 40 sports and health organizations, including MomsTeam.com, the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) has issued a C+ grade on youth sports safety for 2010, reporting that 48 young athletes died since the beginning of the year, with sudden cardiac arrest accounting for nearly half of those deaths, brain injury (concussion) for three, heat illness three, and exertional sickling (a result of sickle cell trait) one. Approximately 8,000 children are treated in emergency rooms each day for sports-related injuries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high school athletes suffer 2 million injuries, 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year.

NFL players with concussions now stay away from the game significantly longer than they did in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to new research.

According to new research, the doubling of the number of ice hockey players in the United States between 1990 and 2006 has come at a cost: a dramatic increase in the number of injuries serious enough to require a visit to a hospital emergency room, with the number of injuries outpacing participation growth.

A Canadian study finding that the risk of concussion  in youth ice hockey leagues that allow body-checking is triple that in leagues that do not, is likely to fuel calls to extend the ban on body-checking to 11- and 12-year-olds playing at the Pee Wee level