Prior to 1992, both the summer and winter Olympic games were always held in the same year. Now, for the first time since 1992, we will be treated to two Olympic Games this year, winter and summer.

I know what you are wondering: how did I miss that the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia had been moved up two years?  Well, relax, you didn't.  The Winter Games I'm talking about are the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG), set to begin a ten day run just over a week from now on Friday, January 13th in Innsbruck, Austria, a city which has already hosted two memorable Winter Olympic Games (1964 and 1976).  The summer Olympics are still set for London, which will become the first city to host three Olympics (1908, 1948, 2012).   Fortunately, I am not a tridecaphobic, so the fact that the Winter YOGs start on a Friday the 13th is no cause for concern.

The Youth Olympic Games were created in response to growing global concerns about childhood obesity and the declining participation of children in sports, especially among children from developing nations. The age range for youth participating in the YOGs is 14 to 18 and there is a strong cultural Culture and Exchange Program, which was developed as a component for each celebration.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President, Jacques Rogge,  says "there will be several goals for the YOG, with the top including; bringing together the world's best young athletes, offering an introduction into Olympics, innovating in educating and debating Olympic values."

Special birthday

As anyone who has been reading my articles and blogs for MomsTeam over the past eleven years knows,* I am a huge fan of the Olympics, especially the Winter Games. Perhaps it is because I was born during a blizzard during the 1952 Winter Olympics in beautifiul Oslo, Norway, on the day figure skater Dick Button won a gold medal after becoming the first to successfully land a triple jump (a triple loop) in competition, or all the skiing I did growing up, or my dream of one day skiing in the Olympics.  Emotionally, I know it is because, as a young athletic girl growing up in a pre-Title IX world, the only time women were valued for their athleticism in any concentrated way was during the Olympics.

Teacher, teacher

Even though there hasn't been much hoopla or publicity about the YOGs, at least not yet, I think this may be an ideal time for parents to ask their children's teachers to talk about the Games in their classrooms.  I will be blogging about some of the members of the U.S. team over the next ten days leading up to the Opening ceremonies.  Chances are some will be on the U.S. team in Sochi two years from now or in 2018, when the Winter Games will be held in Pyeonchang, South Korea. In the meantime, you may want to bookmark the Games' official website: http://www.innsbruck2012.com/en.

---

* Here are some of my other articles and blogs about Olympics past:

A Lifelong Dream: Attending the Olympic Games

Not To Win But To Take Part

Ice Hockey at Fenway: 2010 U.S. Women's Olympic Hockey Team Practices In Shadow of Green Monster

Vancouver Olympics Next Stop For U.S. Women's Hockey Team

Women's Hockey: Gold Medal Showdown At Vancouver Olympics

Seventh Heaven: Canadian Fans Made The Difference

Lindsey Vonn's World Cup Win at Garmisch-Partenkirchen Brings Back Memories

Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games: A Tale of Two Brothers

Angela Ruggiero: My Personal Reflections On Her Retirement

 

A new poll by ESPN: The Magazine contains some good news and bad news about sports concussions.  A confidential survey of 300 high school football players, 100 coaches, 100 parents, and 100 athletic trainers in 23 states reported that concussion awareness is at an all-time high but that players, and to a lesser extent their parents, continue to downplay the risks:

•  Asked to rank where their group fell among all four groups on its level of concern about concussions, there was a concensus that athletic trainers worried the most (1.6 on a 4-point scale with 1=most concerned and 4=least), and players the least (3.5). A troubling sign: athletic trainers appear to still be under pressure from players and parents to rush their return to play.  Said one Ohio ATC, "I find myself buckling to that pressure more than I'd ever imagine."   I am disappointed to hear that there are still parents out there who appear willing to put their kids' health at risk  for athletic glory.
• Very few coaches said they were willing to risk a star player's health by keeping him in the game with a concussion in order to win the state title game, with parents and ATs in agreement, although whether coaches walk the walk when it comes down to crunch time is highly debatable. Players, however, continue to exhibit a winning-at-all-costs attitude, with a majority (54.1%) saying that they would rather win the game with the star playing despite a concussion than lose the game because he was benched.  No wonder that study after study finds under-reporting of concussion symptoms by high school athletes.
• Even though headache is, far and away, the number one reported symptom of concussion, a majority of players (55.4%) felt it didn't warrant a benching until a clear diagnosis was made, putting them at odds, once again, with coaches (33.7%), ATs (29.7%) and parents (24.2%).  Nice to see only one in four parents thinking that it was okay to return.
• Asked whether running a decent chance of permanent brain damage was worth it if a player had a good chance of playing in the NFL, a majority of coaches, parents, players and ATs said it wasn't. More than a third (134 out of 300) players, however, said the risk was worth the reward, just further evidence that we need to do a better job of getting through to the kids on the long-term risk of brain damage from playing professional football. Nearly one in five coaches chose "wealth over health" as well.
• Although nearly three out of four responded either "no chance" or "doubtful" to a player's chances of playing the weekend after suffering a concussion, players are still resistant, with one Georgia player telling ESPN, "My coaches sort of say, 'You're not playing' and it take a lot to convince them to change their minds."
• Helmet safety appears to be a growing concern.  While all four groups gave passing grades to the condition of their football helmets, they all were concerned about where the funds were going to come from to replace worn-out helmets or send them out for reconditioning.  "My school says we don't have money for new helmets or for fixing up old ones," one Michigan linebacker told ESPN. "I have the same beat-up helmet I had last year."  Alarmingly, twelve players gave their helmets a failing grade, more than the other three groups combined (four).  The message to parents: check your child's helmet for a NOCSAE certification sticker, and demand that the program follow the manufacturer's recommendations on annual or bi-annual reconditioning. 

---

Sports concussions continue to be big news.

As visitors to this site and readers of my countless blogs, articles, and editorials on the subject of concussions already know, however, concussions have been important to me and MomsTeam for a lot longer.

It is thus with a certain amount of pride and satisfaction that I have watched as Congress and the national media in recent weeks have joined me on the sports concussion bandwagon and called the N.F.L. out for its lack of leadership on this critical public health issue.  Editorials in newspapers have joined me in criticizing the NFL for its foot dragging. In a November 1, 2009 editorial, for instance, the Las Vegas Sun faulted the league for "repeatedly downplay[ing] research linking concussions to long-term brain injuries", despite what MomsTeam's concussion expert emeritus, Dr. Robert Cantu, told Congress was "growing and convincing evidence" of such a link. It concluded that "the NFL's current stance is putting players at all levels at serious risk" because "college, high school and youth football leagues often follow its lead on safety issues."

 

More ATCs

MomsTeam has long recommended that a certified athletic trainer (AT) be on the sidelines of every high school football game. In my view, and many others, it is simply a disgrace that less than half of the nation's high school have an AT on staff. It is unfortunate that we, as a nation, seem so penny-wise but pound-foolish when it comes to health care that scarce resources are devoted to hiring assistant coaches so our high school teams can win more games when the money could be better spent hiring trained professionals to keep our athletes - the vast of majority of whom are not going to become professional athletes - safe.

We pay to have nurses in our schools (although, as the H1N1 flu epidemic has shown, there are fewer and fewer of them, too, and they are often spread way too thin); but considering the overall health risk to students, why don't we pay to protect more of our high school athletes, especially those contact sports at greatest risk of long-term or catastrophic injury or death?

Teaching proper tackling

A recent NATA study shows that high school players are at greater risk for concussive events in part because they haven't learned proper tackling techniques. Youth Sports Parents has consistently promoted the efforts of coaches like Bobby Hosea to teach players to use what he calls "Dip n' Rip" (a tackling technique in which a football defender stops the ball carrier with an upward thrust across the chest and shoulders, not by leading with his helmet).

Proper tackling technique needs to be taught at every level, from Pop Warner to high school. At least one concussion expert thinks it might eliminate up to half of football concussions at the youth and high school levels. Not surprisingly, witnesses at the Congressional hearings also emphasized the need for teaching better tackling techniques.

Culture change

For the last several years I have also been urging a change in the culture of football, which, from the NFL on down and since the earliest days of the sport, is for players to walk off the pain, take a hit like a man, be a warrior and gladiator, and to keep concussion symptoms to themselves, sometimes with tragic consequences.

As the keynote speaker at a national sports concussion conference in April 2008, and in articles on this site I have proposed that coaches actively, consistently and repeatedly encourage honest self-reporting by athletes of concussion symptoms (and reporting by teammates of symptoms shared with them by other players) and suggested that they make the failure to do so a violation of team rules. Just such a team approach to concussions was suggested by one of the witnesses at the Congressional hearing.

Once again, though, efforts to change the culture of football (and all contact sports, for that matter) have been and continue to be complicated by the NFL's attitude towards head injuries, which still, in my view, sends the wrong message to youth athletes. "Walking off the pain in an N.F.L. game turns into walking it off in a Little League game - the trickle-down effects on high school and college players are very real and can be fatal," warned Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, at the recent Congressional hearings.

I have been working hard the past ten years to educate parents about the risks concussive events pose to their children. As the national concussion conference in April 2008 - a conference attended by representatives of the N.F.L. - I called on the league to do more to educate youth and high school players about the dangers of concussion (especially from failing to report them).  I specifically called on the N.F.L. to sponsor a public service advertising campaign on the subject.

So I was happy to hear, more than a year and a half later, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell grudgingly agree, under pressure from lawmakers, to create public-service announcements to educate the public about the seriousness of concussions.

Kids' brains are different

Hopefully, such PSA's won't reflect the NFL's position before Congress that the same standards for concussion management and return to play should apply from youth football to the pros. The N.F.L.'s one-size-fits-all position flies in the face of research showing that youth, middle school and high school players recover from concussive events much more slowly than professionals. And it appears to completely ignores the consensus of concussion experts, expressed as recently as this past March, "strongly endorsing" a "more conservative return to play approach" for children and adolescents than for the pros, including an outright ban on a same-day return to practice or play.

We know we have a long way to go in concussion education and management when, according to a recent study by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, as many as 4 out of 10 concussed high school athletes are allowed to return to the practice and playing field in violation of current guidelines, including an astounding 16 percent who are allowed to return to the same game after being hard enough to cause a loss of consciousness. How many more Zack Lystedts and Ryne Doughertys will it take before the message gets through that permitting a player to return to the field before his brain has healed from a concussive event (whether involving a loss of consciousness or not) puts them at unacceptable risk of a second, catastrophic or sometimes fatal, head injury.

Reasons to be more cautious

The Congressional hearings and recent stories in magazines like The New Yorker give parents more reasons than ever to be cautious about letting their sons play football. Based on a 2005 North Carolina study of retired pro players founds those with three or more concussions had increased risk of mild cognitive impairment after age 50, the lead author, Kevin Guskiewicz, recently told the Baltimore Sun that it was reasonable to "assume that a high school player who likewise had three or more [concussive events] during his high school years would potentially be predisposed to some of these same long-term neurodegenerative conditions that NFL players are," but there's no evidence - at least yet - for that.

A telephone survey of over 1,000 former NFL players conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and commissioned by the N.F.L. found, alarmingly, that former players were being diagnosed with Alzheimer's or similar memory-related diseases at a rate 19 times higher than the normal rate for men aged 30 through 49

Most troubling, perhaps, is recent evidence, highlighted in The New Yorker article, that playing football may be dangerous even to those who don't ever experience a concussive event; that players in the so-called trenches (on the offensive and defensive line), may be at risk of early dementia (in the form of a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or C.T.E.) from the cumulative effect of the  sub-concussive blows they sustain over the course of their careers every time the ball is snapped. We simply don't know whether all those hits are, as a former N.F.L. lineman characterized them in a recent posting on Deadspin.com, tiny "time bombs planted in our brains with fuses of indeterminate length." 

Tough choices for parents

Given the increased focus on head injuries in football, parents have naturally become more and more concerned about what playing football will mean to their child's long-term health. Recent news stories have recounted how parents of football players have been torn about whether they should let their kids continue playing and describe the prospect of long-term injury if they keep playing as "kind of scary." Some report having decided not to let their kids play football based on the new evidence.

Again, this is something I faced ten years ago. As I have recounted on these pages, I ultimately decided to end my son Spencer's football career after his sophomore year in high school because to continue playing, given his history of concussions and learning disabilities, posed, in my view, an unacceptable risk of long-term injury.  And this was long before studies began coming out showing just how potentially dangerous football was to a player's long-term mental health.

I am not now and have never suggested that parents simply refuse to let their children play football. But parents do need to make the decision based on complete information; information which they still do not have. Concussion experts candidly acknowledge that little is currently known exactly about long-term health risks of concussion for N.F.L. players, much less players whose football careers end in high school or college.

More research is needed over a longer period of time before we will know - if we will ever know - just how dangerous football is to the human brain - particularly the developing brain of a youth, middle school or high school player. There is not now and never will be a one-size-fits-all answer. It is likely that the American obsession with football will continue for decades to come. But at the very least we - and the NFL - need to continue to provide the very best information.

My first-born son, Taylor (granted, he is only older than his two triplet brothers by a minute!), has taken up a new sport: Ice climbing. He loves it, but I have to say I am less than thrilled. Should I worry?

I am often asked by safety-conscious parents for advice on how to be less nervous watching their children play sports. The questions come from first-time sports dads watching their children play sports against bigger kids to moms who admit to biting their nails during their sons' wrestling matches and football games.

I even have a small file of e-mails from parents who refuse to watch their children play sports at all. I always find these e-mails sad. For me watching my triplet sons and their friends - whether it was on the baseball diamond, lacrosse field, soccer pitch or football gridiron - was almost always a joy. Sure, there were times when I worried about their physical safety (particularly when it came to watching Spencer play football). I think all parents worry and it wouldn't be natural if they didn't.

For years I have been responding to e-mails from worried parents by reminding moms that it is perfectly natural for them to be concerned about their child's safety playing sports because moms have been the "guardians of children at play" since prehistoric times and by suggesting that it didn't do any good to worry about what, in all likelihood, was an injury that wasn't going to happen.

I give the same advice to dads, even if most of their e-mails weren't about their nervousness around watching their kids play. I also tell them about the short meditation/prayer that I used to say before their games: "Please let my children play strong and smart, be fair and have fun." I decided early on in my time as a sports parent that accidents do happen but most of them can be prevented if the kids play smart and the adults running the program have done their homework.

An experienced rock climber

But what about my concern about Taylor's ice climbing? It's not like he's a novice climber. He climbs almost every day, whether outdoors or indoors on a rock climbing wall at a gym. He has gone rock climbing in New Zealand, South Africa and all over the United States from Alabama to Colorado, Tennessee to New York, New Hampshire to Massachusetts. 

While he does not recall much of his very early rock climbing "career" I have great pictures of him climbing on stone walls in Connecticut when he was less than two years old and later at the age of four in the Great Falls National Park in Virginia.

Later, he spent a couple of summers at a camp in the Adirondacks hiking and mountain climbing, and two summers in high school climbing, dirt biking, and kayaking in the West. It wasn't until he was attending Skidmore College in upstate New York that he fell in love with rock climbing.

Wake-up call

Now a grown young man, he is on his own. I rarely worry about him because I know he is smart and cautious. The one time he had a very serious fall was in Ithaca New York when he fell down a deep gorge, landing in the water barely able to swim because of a serious gash in his calf. The wound later became seriously infected.

Fortunately, the accident was a real wake-up call. Taylor realized that it was entirely preventable. He was climbing without ropes, at night. Amazing how a brush with death will teach you valuable lessons.

Fact is that I have only watched Taylor climb in person only once since he was a little boy. (It has more to do with the day- or week-long treks that he and his climbing buddies take together to the best climbing spots, which are usually deep in the woods and far from the beaten-path, than my apprehension). 

It was on a trip to Arizona we took together a couple of years ago when I was promoting my book. We took a hike out into a canyon. I was glad Taylor was there to protect us from the rattlesnakes and delighted that all those summer wilderness adventures that I sent him on when he was a teenager had paid off! 

An extreme sport?

Recently, I was filling out a life insurance form to obtain a rate quote and one of the things I had to check off were answers to a question in big, black bold letters asking: Do you engage in any of the following activities? Underwater diving? Motor racing? Aerial Sports (ballooning, parachuting, sky diving, hang gliding). Rock Climbing?

While I am mesmerized when watch the videos of Taylor and his friends rock climbing all over the world (well ... at least most of the time), I guess the bottom line is that I am not all that comfortable with the knowing that he has taken up ice climbing.

But, perhaps I shouldn't worry. After all, ice climbing wasn't on the list! 

---

Are your children involved in extreme sports? How to you handle the stress and worry?

Taylor has posted a great a question in our forums: If the vast majority of deaths and injuries in youth sports take place in traditional sports, shouldn't these sports be labeled as "extreme" just as much as the so-called extreme sports?

What do you think? Are extreme sports safer than other sports?

Attachment	Size
meiceclimbing-TheFilm-MomsTeam_Video_Preset.flv	12.57 MB

If you are anything like me, worrying about your kids' safety is woven deeply into the fabric of your DNA.  As the mom of  a football player, I know football moms are no exception. No matter how strong we may appear to be on the outside, worry is our constant companion, especially when it comes to injuries, like concussions.

So what's a mom to do? Live with it in anguish? Or do something about it?

More and more moms are choosing, like I have been for more than a decade, to be pro-active about their kids' safety in sports, and, in doing so are turning to an unlikely source - technology - to ease their fears.

One of the new products on the market, to which MomsTeam is proud to give its Seal of Approval. is the Impact Indicator from Battle Sports Science.* 

In simplest terms, the Impact Indicator is a sensor that fits neatly into a soft, durable chinstrap. Players strap it on to their helmet and go about their business playing the game they love (and that football moms and dads love to watch them play). While they do, the Impact Indicator's cutting-edge technology is always at work. If a player's helmet is hit, the device measures the G-force and the duration of the hit to the helmet in HIC levels (Head Injury Criteria), which is one way to measure the likelihood of head injury from an impact (there are, as of yet, no studies telling us precisely the amount of force necessary to cause a concussion, and the amount of force that results in concussion can, and does, vary from player to player and, often, over time).

In so doing, the Impact Indicator addresses one of football's (and one of a mom's) biggest worries, head injuries (e.g. concussions). As readers of my blog and of my articles on MomsTeam know, while concussions have become one of the most widely reported subjects in sports in recent years, at all levels, from pee wee to pro, they have been one of my passions for over a decade.

We know that the number of concussions youth, middle and high school athletes are sustaining in games and practices has risen so much in recent years (ironically, part, because those that don't involve a loss of consciousness - which account for 90 to 95% of the total - are now being counted as concussions) that it has reached, according to the Centers for Disease Control, "epidemic levels." Football, not surprisingly, continues to be the sport reporting the greatest number of concussions (it is the number one sport in America in terms of participation), and the highest concussion rate.

The good news is that, according to recent studies, most young athletes fully recover from the effects of a concussion within the first seven to ten days, provided they get the physical and cognitive rest they need to allow their growing brains to fully heal, and that advances in medical research and technology are helping better identify those head injuries on the sports sideline that warrant further assessment and evaluation.

And that's where the Impact Indicator is valuable. When an impact that may cause a concussion is detected, a light on the chinstrap changes from green to red to alert parents, coaches, athletic trainers and referees to the possibility of a concussion. The player can then be evaluated on the sideline and, if he exhibits signs of concussion (such as short-term memory, dizziness, headache, or balance problems), immediately removed from the game, as the law now requires in 28 states and the District of Columbia.

The Impact Indicator wasn't developed by a mother, but clearly it was inspired by them.  I wish it had been around when my son was playing football and I spent much of my time in the bleachers worrying about his safety.  It should give today's parents a little less reason to worry, which is a very good thing, indeed. And, for those football moms (and dads) who happen to live in Texas or Arizona, a flashing red Impact Indicator on your son's helmet may actually give you the right under the law, as a parent, to insist upon the removal of your child from play for further evaluation.

Granted, the Impact Indicator isn't going to spot all concussions, and is only one tool in the concussion toolbox. But even if it only warns about one concussion that would otherwise gone undetected, it is a tool I think any football mom would want to have.

---

For the most comprehensive information for sports parents about concussions, visit the MomsTeam concussion center.

More information about the Impact Indicator can be found at www.battlesportsscience.com.

*MomsTeam is proud to have Battle Sports Science as one of our sponsors.