New state concussion law not as stringent as Gaston County policy
As a high school football coach, Mickey Lineberger can think of a few things he’d rather not have to worry about.
Like whether it’s safe to let an injured kid return to the game.
Lineberger has coached at South Point for years and says he’s fortunate that at least one trainer and one doctor man the sideline at every football game. They’re the ones who make the medical decisions.
“I’m just thankful that’s out of my hands,” Lineberger said. “… We try to take care of the football part of it.”
A new law aims to make that the case at high schools and middle schools across the state. Heightened awareness of concussions in athletics has led to a law that makes it illegal for coaches to play an athlete who shows signs of a concession.
The Gfeller-Waller Concussion Awareness Act, signed into law June 16 by Gov. Bev Perdue, is named after two high school football players in North Carolina who died on the football field in 2008 due to head injuries.
The law deals with all sports and goes into effect when the 2011-12 school year begins. Among its highlights:
*Requires athletes at North Carolina public high schools and middle schools to be removed from participation if they show concussion symptoms or signs. The athlete cannot return to play or practice until being cleared by a physician, neuropsychologist, athletic trainer or physician assistant.
*Coaches, school nurses, athletic directors, first responders, volunteers, athletes and parents will receive an information sheet on concussions and head injuries each year.
*Schools must develop emergency action plans to deal with serious injuries.
*Several groups including a brain injury research center will develop an athletic concussion safety training program for the use of coaches, athletes and others associated with interscholastic sports.
The law brings little change to high school and middle school sports locally. Gaston County’s concussion policy is more stringent than the state law and has been in effect since the 2007-08 school year.
Under the county policy, any athlete with a suspected concussion must be removed from play for the remainder of the day. For high school students, if the symptoms last more than 10 minutes, the athlete cannot return to action until symptoms disappear for seven consecutive days and must receive a written release from a state licensed physician.
Keith Travis, director of sports medicine for Sports Plus Physical Therapy in Gastonia, gave former Gaston County Schools athletic director Butch Adams much of the credit for putting Gaston County ahead of the game. Adams, who retired in 2009, pushed for stringent health-related procedures, including policies regarding concussions and heat safety.
“We just decided we were going to be proactive instead of reactive,” said Jarrett Friday, another certified athletic trainer with Sports Plus who played a hand in the Gaston County policies. “We saw the writing on the wall that this was probably coming down the road … and we didn’t want to be surprised.”
Sports Plus sponsored a concussion forum for local coaches in February and revisited the issue at its coaches’ symposium last month.
Bessemer City head football coach Larry Boone said that even though Gaston County has already placed a strong emphasis on concussion education, the new law will make him even more cautious.
“It’s our hind end,” Boone said. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to be ‘Coach Boone loses job because he played a kid who had a concussion.’”
The only changes that the law brings to Gaston County are the mandatory training and the fact that a player can be cleared by medical professionals other than a doctor.
The law also brings little change to the state’s governing body of high school sports. The N.C. High School Athletic Association had already required that athletes not return to action the same day as a head injury or any subsequent day if they still have symptoms. Rick Strunk, spokesman for the NCHSAA, said coaches are more aware of concussions than ever.
“Our member schools are doing everything they can to impact positively the safety of their student athletes,” Strunk said.
Lineberger, promoted from assistant coach during the offseason, has more experience than he would like dealing with athletes who suffer head injuries. At least four players missed playing time last fall with concussions.
The problem wasn’t isolated to Belmont. Kim Jones, director of physical therapy at Sports Plus, said Gaston County saw at least 70-80 diagnosed concussions last fall, a considerably higher number than in the previous year. Most concussions happen in football but also occur in other sports such as soccer, Travis said.
Travis warns that the law doesn’t eliminate the inherent dangers in sports. And he believes some “old-school” coaches will continue to keep players with concussion symptoms in the game. That problem, he said, will fix itself over time as younger, more open-minded coaches step into the profession.
For now, coaches have one more reason to stop and think about an athletes’ health.
“You can’t prevent everything,” Travis said. “… but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Phillip Gardner: 704-869-1843; twitter.com/gazettephil