Given all the publicity surrounding head injuries in professional and amateur sports, I have been waiting for someone or some group to come up with a sensible plan to reduce the problem at the grassroots.
For decades, the attitude has been that there is an acceptable inherent risk of head and other injuries when playing professional sports.
Pro sports is a beast of its own making. Protecting athletes is sometimes not a priority when weighing safety against entertainment value and profits. No doubt there is plenty more that could be done in leagues such as the NHL and NFL to reduce serious head injuries, but it would cost in terms of the entertainment value fans have come to expect.
But the same roadblock shouldn’t be and isn’t there for amateur athletes. That is the ideal study arena for scientists and doctors looking for ways to help prevent these injuries.
The medical community has determined that young brains are most susceptible to damage and must be better protected. Several university studies support this determination. Research shows, in fact, that even hits that don’t appear serious at the time can cause problems down the road.
So I was happy to hear Friday that the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston has advocated a hit count for athletes. Basically, the concept is based on the pitch count followed so closely at every age level in children’s baseball.
The difference with the head count concept is that injuries to the brain are hopefully avoided, instead of injuries to the arm or shoulder in the pitch count strategy.
The proposal is aimed at reducing repeated brain trauma by keeping track of and putting a ceiling on the number of hits an athlete takes during practices, games and seasons. According to the proposal, players who endure a certain number or severity of hits would be taken out of action for the season.
"If we go to such great lengths to protect the elbows of baseball players, then heck, don’t you think we ought to set limits to the number of times we allow a child to be hit in the head in sports?" Dr. Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University’s school of medicine and past president of the American College of Sports Medicine, said in a news release.
"A hit count has been proposed by prominent researchers, many of whom we are grateful to for providing the research that has revealed, for example, that high school football players have been recorded taking 197 hits to the head exceeding 15 g in a game and 2,235 in a season.
"Our goal is to translate this bold idea into policy aimed at protecting children. In some sports, there is simply too much unregulated and unnecessary brain trauma."
Anyone who has suffered a brain injury or who knows someone with such an injury soon realizes the myriad of problems that accompany concussions. I had heard from several of those afflicted families in Nova Scotia in recent months.
There is no doubt the Sidney Crosby case has given this issue a high profile and has made it a major concern for many working in and participating in sports. But solutions and preventative measures must come from doctors and scientists working in this field.
They are the ones who have shown us that children’s injuries can be just as dangerous, if not more so, than those incurred by adults. Taking action on suggested safety measures is a major step toward eventually making youth sports safer for all players.
Chris Cochrane is a sports columnist with The Chronicle Herald and the author of Inside the Game.
