Concussion awareness grows, even on the high school gridiron
It’s not a written rule in football, but it’s certainly part of the sport’s ethos: grit it out. Play through pain, even injury, if it helps the team to win.
That mindset can make for tales of sports heroism, as players take to the field with taped-up ribs, wonky knees or worse. But when it comes to head injuries, specifically concussions, athletes and their coaches cannot afford to take chances.
The impact of a concussive hit can echo throughout a player’s lifetime if left undiagnosed and untreated. Both active and retired athletes in the National Football League are just beginning to realize the lifelong consequences of repeated head trauma, which can range from memory loss to depression and early-onset dementia.
But those repercussions aren’t limited to the professional level. According to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emergency room visits for sports-related brain injuries to children and adolescents increased 60 percent between 2001 and 2009.
After bike accidents, football was the top cause of these injuries, with 25,376 reported ER cases during the eight-year period.
In Texas, where playing the sport is a rite of passage for so many young boys, legislators have gotten proactive in addressing treatment for athletic head injuries.
Effective since Sept. 1, HB 2038 (better known as “Natasha’s Law”) codifies many of the precautions that coaches for football and other sports already practiced in the event of head injuries. It’s named after Natasha Helmick, a soccer player from Allen who battled concussions and pushed hard for legislation.
The crux of the law is that if a student athlete suffers a suspected concussion, he or she must be pulled from the activity immediately. Students must then be evaluated, tested and approved by a doctor or trainer before returning to the field.
Significantly, it’s no longer in a coach’s power to send a player with a possible concussion back into play.
“I think concussions are being more recognized,” said Dr. Steven Brown. A neurosurgeon at Hendrick Medical Center, Brown is a member of the task force that oversees the Abilene Independent School District’s implementation of the new law. “Before, when an athlete got a head injury, it was just, ‘Well, you got your bell rung. Get back out there.’”
Once a student gets diagnosed with a concussion, he or she has to go symptom-free for a week, graduating through a five-step regimen of increasing physical activity before returning to the action.
For Winters High School football coach Stephen Hermesmeyer, that one-week period is ironclad. He has coached for 15 years, and while he admits some coaches out there might have thrown kids back into the fire too quickly in the past, he has never seen that sort of behavior on one of his coaching staffs.
“If there’s any suspicion of a concussion, we rule on the side of a concussion,” Hermesmeyer said. “It’s not worth a kid’s life. We’re here to win, we’re here to play, but I’m also a realist. If it were my son out there, I would hope that the coach and the school district would do everything they could to keep him safe.”
Winters brings in a certified trainer from Action Sports Medicine in Abilene to make those calls so that Hermesmeyer doesn’t have to. Other school districts, like Wylie, have personnel of their own to make those decisions.
Wylie athletic trainer Brian Stuart said the football team already has seen one concussion this season. The student in question sat for a week, but is now back training with the team.
When a player receives a rattling hit, Stuart starts looking for telltale symptoms. A headache is the most obvious one, but that’s not always a sure sign of a concussion. Other red flags can include dizziness, nausea or short-term memory loss. Stuart tests players by giving them a selection of words, and then checking back a minute later to see if they can remember them.
But as much as he does to check on players, Stuart still relies on parents and even teammates to alert him if a particular student might be struggling.
“There’s no way we can prevent every one,” Stuart said. “And if someone doesn’t tell you, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Aiding Stuart is the fact that concussion awareness is on the rise. The CDC report credits increased public awareness, including legislation like the kind in Texas, for the jump in childhood ER visits. Increasingly, parents and coaches are valuing caution over competitive spirit.
“It’s a whole lot more important than W’s or L’s,” Hermesmeyer said. “I’ll take an L any day of the week if that means the kid’s still OK at the end of the day.”