SportsLetter

Ending the year on an up note

From Douglas E. Abrams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Youth sports parents get a bad name these days, and some parents deserve it. Every week seems to bring new headlines about out-of-control fathers and mothers who verbally (and sometimes physically) assault officials, coaches, other parents, and even other youngsters.

The violence is real, but headlines about a few unhinged parents at games played each year by more than 30 million boys and girls can make the sports scene appear much worse than it really is. In the 42 years that I coached youth hockey, troublesome parents were the exception and not the rule.

Each December, I present the year’s “top 5” news stories about young athletes who did something special. The stories change each year, but the parents’ role remains the same. Once again, the young stars in this year’s top 5 could not have inspired us without first learning right from wrong at home. Most parents do it right.

Show Me State shows a lot of HS football concussions

The Missouri State High School Activities Association [MSHSAA] released the results of a yearlong survey of "suspected concussions in sports and related events" and football was by far the sport with the most head injuries.

From CBS St. Louis:

“653 [football] incidents versus soccer with just 120, followed by wrestling and spirit – or cheerleading – with 48 each,” [MSHSAA executive director Harvey] Richards said.

He said those numbers fall in line with national averages.

From the MSHSAA's 2012 Interscholastic Youth Sports Brain Injury Report:

There were a total of 881 males and 241 females held out of practices and contests due to a head injury, for a total of 5,705 and 2,501 days respectively. This means that the male athletes were held out on an average of 6.5 days per incident and females were held out 10.4 days. This indicates a good correlation to the gradual return-to-play guidelines which indicate a 7-day return rate.

SL Interview: Teacher, coach Stuart Krohn talks about inner-city rugby

Rugby is among the fastest growing youth sports in the country.  And, while the total number of youth playing rugby remains modest when compared to soccer, football, volleyball, basketball, baseball and softball, the sport is poised to receive a huge boost in 2016, when the sport returns to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1924.  The United States won the gold medal, defeating France, 17-3.

Since 2003, former professional player Stuart Krohn has spearheaded an effort to promote youth rugby in South Los Angeles.  An English teacher with the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) charter group, Krohn has organized boys and girls teams among students who attend ICEF's 14 schools.  Approximately 80 percent of ICEF's 4,200 students are African-American.  Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles, is the chairman of the board of ICEF.

A major component of ICEF's rugby program involves taking students abroad to compete in rugby hotbeds like South Africa and Hong Kong.  Earlier this year, Krohn led boys and girls rugby teams to New Zealand to play youth squads in that rugby-mad country.  Director James Brown filmed the tour and interviewed the players about living in South Los Angeles and playing a "new" sport.  His feature documentary, titled "Red, White, Black & Blue," shows how sport can impact youth and connect cultures separated by thousands of miles.

"SportsLetter" recently interviewed Stuart Krohn, an executive producer of the film, about the ICEF rugby program, the new documentary, and rugby at the 2016 Olympic Games.
--David Davis

Visual evidence of brain injuries in athletes

Yesterday the New York Times published a stunning series of photographs of trauma-induced damage to the brains of athletes. 

The photographs were provided by the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy and accompanied a Times article on a brain study published in the scientific journal “Brain.”

From the New York Times:

The study, which included brain samples taken posthumously from 85 people who had histories of repeated mild traumatic brain injury, added to the mounting body of research revealing the possible consequences of routine hits to the head in sports like football and hockey. The possibility that such mild head trauma could result in long-term cognitive impairment has come to vex sports officials, team doctors, athletes and parents in recent years.

and

Six high school football players, nine college football players, seven pro boxers and four N.H.L. players, including Derek Boogaard, the former hockey enforcer who died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and painkillers, also showed signs of C.T.E. [chronic traumatic encephalopathy]

And on Friday the New York Times hockey blog Slap Shot reported on a hockey concussion study published that day in the journal “Neurosurgical Focus.”

While the results of the study are considered "preliminary and inconclusive" they did strongly suggest that small "subconcussive" blows to the head:

"can have a cumulative effect and can lead to damage in the brain similar to that caused by diagnosed concussions. They say that if small blows, like the ones in hockey that result from checks into the boards or routine collisions and falls to the ice, are repeated often enough, they can even lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease."