Another high school football player dies after a head on head collision. A young ilfe cut short way to soon. A tragedy for sure. Education, better coaching, and impact devices in helmets can only do so much. Officials can only do so much, but in many cases not enough.
One of our three high school hockey goalies has already gotten a concussion during "Captains Practice." The official season starts in November. Hope he recovers in time.
The NHL is promoting the new TOUGH GUYS for this season. The fighters. But the NHL is in the entertainment business. Youth and high school players in all sports are supposed to graduate in one piece; not already broken down or, in a few instances, not at all or ever.
At the first team meeting for an 8th grade lacrosse summer team after the club VP had welcomed everybody and remarked that all the kids will have a great time, I said, "And your boys will get hurt playing lacrosse. Likely not seriously, but they will get dinged up." And they did .A couple of the injuries were serious. I had to stop two scrimmage games, as I deemed it unsafe for the players. The adults were also out of control.
It seems to me that, unless those with all the power to intervene demand changes, the status quo will continue, and more and more kids will be seriously injured, some lasting for a lifetime. Who has this power?
Moms have the power, and need to exercise it before the name of one more son or daughter appears in a newspaper headline because they have suffered a serious or fatal injury.
Sports need to have two tracks: Developmental and recreational. In order to be on the developmental track, kids need to qualify by a various number of metrics and the recreational track changes the rules to make the game safer for these kids.
Time to give kids their lives back.
