All Articles by Brooke de Lench

Remembering Bob Bigelow: A Tireless Advocate For Youth Athletes

Bob Bigelow, who died in August 2020 at the age of 66, was not just a tireless advocate for youth athletes and about making sports about skill development and not just about winning, he was a friend to MomsTeam.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

News from MomsTEAM/ SmartTeams

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 19:13. | comments

 

Our understanding of TBI has come a long way since MomsTEAM launched its pioneering Concussion Safety Center in 2001. But the work of educating sports stakeholders about the management of TBI in children and adolescents, and ways to minimize the risk of brain injury in sports is, by its very nature, a never-ending and ongoing process.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

19th Annual Mother's Day Wish List

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Wed, 05/08/2019 - 11:26. | comments

It's Mothers Day once again. Time for spring sports, warmer weather, longer days, planting gardens, and, of course, watching kids play sports. Each year for the past nineteen years, MomsTEAM has published my Mother's Day Wish list. As you will see, many of the wishes on this year's list will look very familiar to long-time visitors. 

Every year for the past 19 years, MomsTEAM Founder Brooke de Lench has issued a Mother's Day wish list. Here's this year's list.
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Affording the Latest in Football Equipment: A Car Raffle Is The Ticket!

Increased safety in tackle football comes at a cost, leaving many youth and high school programs – and the parents and booster clubs which support them – in a quandary: wondering on the one hand how they can afford to buy expensive new helmets and impact sensor systems for their players, and on the other, how they can afford not to. A car raffle offers a quick and easy way to raise money to buy the latest equipment.
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Impact Sensors: A Missing Piece of Head Injury Programs

One way to address the problem of chronic under-reporting and increase the chances a concussion will be identified early on the sports sideline, say some leading experts, is to rely less on athletes to remove themselves from games or practices by reporting concussion symptoms, or on game officials and sideline observers to observe signs of concussion, but to use impact sensors as essentially another set of eyes to alert sideline personnel to heavy hits that might cause a concussion.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Creating A Culture Of Concussion Safety Requires Teamwork All Season Long, Not Just One Day

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Mon, 10/09/2017 - 16:34. | comments

 

If your child plays a contact or collision sport, whether at the youth, middle school or high school level, chances are they will suffer a concussion at some point in their athletic career. How quickly they recover may depend on how soon after injury - if at all - their concussion is identified so they can be removed from practice or game action. The problem is that concussion signs - still the best way to identify a concussion - are difficult to spot, and athletes often hide their symptoms.

One way to improve the chances that an athlete's brain injury is identified is for teams to employ a "buddy" system in which team members are assigned to watch for signs of concussion in designated teammates and, if they spot signs, or if their teammates tell them they are experiencing symptoms, are encouraged or required to immediately report the possible injury to the athletic trainer or the coach.
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Study Linking Tackle Football Before Age 12 With Greater Risk Of Later Health Problems: Does It Hold Up Under Scrutiny?

A study by researchers at Boston University finding that athletes who were less than 12 years old at the time of their first exposure to tackle football had more behavioral and cognitive problems later in life than those whose age of first exposure to the sport was later has, predictably, garnered a great deal of attention from the mainstream media. In the interest of balanced and objective reporting, we asked a number of researchers and clinicians to review and comment on the study. Here's what they told us.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Letting Kids Play Football is Not Child Abuse

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Mon, 08/14/2017 - 17:00. | comments


The last three weeks have witnessed an all-out assault on the game of football, not coincidentally timed with the beginning of NFL training camps. First came a study reporting CTE in 110 of 111 brains of former NFL players. Following closely on the heels of that media circus was the publication last week of a new book by Dr. Bennet Omalu, Truth Doesn't Have a Side, and interviews in which Dr. Omalu, as he has for several years, argues that letting kids play football is the "definition" of child abuse. The not-so-surprising result has been a tsunami of emails in my Inbox asking for my views on the subject.

Are parents committing child abuse simply by allowing their kids to play a collision sport like football before middle school? Not unless it rises to the level of a callous and wanton disregard for a child's safety (e.g. reckless endangerment).
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

CTE: Is The Media Scaring Young Athletes To Death?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Wed, 08/09/2017 - 16:52. | comments

As someone who has been educating sports parents about head trauma in sports for the past seventeen years, and about the very real risk posed by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) for the last decade, it is not surprising that I receive emails from parents all the time expressing deep concern about stories in the media that have led them - wrongly - to fear that playing contact or collision sports, or suffering a sports-related concussion, especially one slow to heal, makes it inevitable that their child will develop CTE and is at greatly increased risk of committing suicide.

As someone who has been educating sports parents about head trauma in sports for the past seventeen years, and about the very real risk posed by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) for the last decade, it is not surprising that I receive emails from parents all the time expressing deep concern about stories in the media that have led them - wrongly - to fear that playing contact or collision sports, or suffering a sports-related concussion, especially one slow to heal, makes it inevitable that their child will develop CTE and is at greatly increased risk of committing suicide.
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Proper Acclimatization Key to Preventing EHS in Young Athletes, Especially Football Players

EHS is the third leading cause of sudden death in high school athletes. It is therefore critically important that football and other sports programs take steps to reduce the risk that participants will suffer heat-related illnesses, especially during hot weather in the summer and fall. One of the best ways to do so is by following heat acclimatization guidelines.
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