All Articles by Brooke de Lench

Safety Comes First, No Matter Sport or Season

The winter sports season is in full swing, and spring sports are a ways off, but safety comes first, no matter what the sport or the season. Here's a sixteen-point safety checklist to keep athletes in the game.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

A Mother's Day Wish List

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 05/09/2013 - 18:20. | comments

It's May once again. Time for spring sports, warmer weather, longer days, and, of course, Mother's Day. This year, instead of celebrating mothers with the usual cards and flowers, I have put together a special wish list for the mothers, grand mothers, step mothers and other caregivers in this country with kids playing sports.

Brooke de Lench and Taylor Lench

Here's this year's list:

This Mother's Day, as has been her Brooke's practice in years past, she has a wish list for making youth sports better. Here's this year's list.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Improving Concussion Safety in High School Football: Promising Developments, But A Long Way To Go

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Sat, 04/27/2013 - 16:14. | comments

It has been a good two weeks for parents looking to make high school football safer, with a number of promising developments. But it is not time to declare victory, and many questions remain to be answered.

The last two full weeks of April 2013 have been a good one for parents looking to make high school football safer, but it is not time to declare victory, and many questions remain to be answered,
Read more »

ASTM Standard for Women's Lacrosse Helmet: Beginning of Debate About Whether Good For Game, Not End

Approval of an ASTM standard for women's lacrosse likely in early 2015 is not likely to end the debate about whether mandating such helmets is good for the game, experts say, but is a necessary step towards finding the answer to that question.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Stricter Enforcement of Rules Against Helmet-to-Helmet Contact: The Time For Action Is Now

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 04/11/2013 - 13:10. | comments

The most recent consensus statement on concussion in sport (1) states that "rule enforcement may be a critical aspect of modifying injury risk."    

Watch any high school football game and you will see a lot of helmet-to-helmet contact in the trenches, much of which has been technically illegal for over three decades. The problem is that penalties are rarely, if ever, called; so much so, that linemen see leading with their helmet, perversely, as a form of self-protection. The time for that to change is now.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

The Smartest Team Is Out!

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 17:42. | comments

It's hard to believe that, after over a year of hard work, MomsTEAM's high school football documentary, "The Smartest Team, is finally being released! 

The release of MomsTEAM's high school football documentary, "The Smartest Team," is the culmination of everything we have learned over the last 13 years as the pioneer in youth sports concussion education, and 13 months working with a high school football community and a team of experts to implement a concussion risk management program we call the Six Pillars.
Read more »

The Six Pillars of Concussion Risk Management: The MomsTEAM Approach

Head injuries in football, as in other contact and collision sports, cannot be completely eliminated, but there ARE steps that can be taken to minimize risk. MomsTEAM's high school football concussion documentary, "The Smartest Team," focuses on "The Six Pillars" of concussion risk management: education, protection, identification, treatment, return to play and retirement.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

NFL's Goodell Speaks At UNC About Concussion Safety

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 03/07/2013 - 14:35. | comments

On March 6, 2013, National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell spoke about concussion safety at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was there at the invitation of a leading concussion expert, Kevin Guskiewicz, PhD, ATC, Kenan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at UNC.

In a wide-ranging speech (see video below), Commissioner Goodell indicated that the NFL "stand[s] ready" to  "share any of our research with any other league," and expressed the belief that "we should all be working to make youth sports safer." 

We at MomsTEAM couldn't agree more. 

Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Lost in Translation: The Perils of Tweeting About Concussions

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 02/28/2013 - 18:14. | comments

One of the things I try to do every day is carve out time to keep up with what people are saying on Twitter, and occasionally throwing in my two-cents worth. For those of you reading this blog who follow MomsTEAM on Twitter, it won't come as any big surprise that concussions in sports seems to be the topic that most often lights up the youth sports Twittersphere.

But as anyone active on Twitter also knows, condensing one's thoughts into 140 character "tweets" is often a challenge, and can sometimes leave a lot to be desired, especially when one is talking about a subject as complex as concussions.

Last night was one of those times.

As anyone active on Twitter knows, condensing one's thoughts into 140 character "tweets" is often a challenge, especially when one is talking about a subject as complex as concussions. Last night was one of those times.
Read more »
Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Chronic Under-Reporting Of Concussion: Is Changing The Culture A Realistic Solution?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 03:39. | comments

 

If your child plays a contact or collision sport, whether at the youth, middle school or high school level, odds are that at some point in their athletic career they will suffer a concussion. How well they recover depends a lot on how quickly their concussion is identified so they can be removed from practice or game action. 

A lot of student-athletes - a declining percentage, fortunately - don't appreciate precisely when they have suffered a concussion. There are a lot of reasons:

Most athletes won't self-report concussion symptoms to sideline personnel, much less voluntarily remove themselves from the game. Changing the culture is one way to address the problem of chronic under-reporting, but it can't be counted on as a panacea.
Read more »
« first‹ previous…67891011121314…next ›last »