Health & Safety

In the wake of the Penn State and USA Swimming sex abuse scandals, parents need to be on the lookout for the warning signs that their child's coach may be sexual abusing them.

One of the most effective ways to reduce the risk that your child or a teammate will be a victim of sexual harassment or abuse is to set boundaries at the pre-season meeting of parents and coaches.

In the wake of yet another sex abuse scandal in sports, here are some steps experts say parents can take to minimize the risk that their child, or a teammate will be a victim of sexual abuse or harassment.

Building school spirit through rituals is a time-honored tradition at most American schools, from middle school through college. A hazing ritual is often defended as a way for people to earn their place in an organization and to build school and organizational spirit. The distorted logic of hazing apologists is that the worse a person joining the organization is treated, the better leader and performer he or she will be. Team building rituals should be focused on team development and not on individual embarrassment and injury. It is this area which is most likely to be abused or misunderstood. Whether the initiation ritual revolves around doing silly things like dressing up in weird clothes during school or singing amusing songs at a school assembly, the activity should not be one that creates such anger and humiliation that the young student vow to get revenge. When this type of initiation is done well it creates fun and helps all people on the team know that the new player is willing to trust the older ones to do activities which enhance the performance of the team.

Perhaps no other topic sparks as much heated debate among parents as the practice of cutting potential players from middle or high school teams. While there are two sides to the argument, I believe the practice is outmoded and needs to be reexamined in light of twenty-first century realities.

Of the tens of thousands of e-mails MomsTeam has received over the years, most distressing are those that detail how often some try to justify emotional or even physical abuse of youth sports athletes in the name of winning. Simply put, there is no excuse for such abuse.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that aggressive driving and road rage have been responsible for 2.28 million crashes and 27,935 traffic fatalities in the past five years. Interactions that might have involved non-violent gestures a few years back now may involve golf clubs or weapons. Remember, the deadliest weapons of all are vehicles themselves.

The National Athletic Trainers' Association has re-released a set of recommendations for precautions that should be followed by parents, coaches, athletic trainers, other health care professionals and participants in secondary school athletics, in order to prevent the spread of communicable and infectious diseases. Due to the nature of competitive sports at the high school level, there is an elevated risk of infectious diseases being spread by skin-to-skin contact and contaminated equipment shared by athletes.

The best way to prevent the spread of staph infections such as the antibiotic-resistant skin infection or "super bug" known as
methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus ("MRSA") is to maintain good personal hygiene in locker room, schools and at home.

With wrestling season about to begin, parents, coaches and
wrestlers need to know how the spread of communicable skin conditions, such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus ("MRSA"), can be prevented.  Here is a twelve-step prevention program.