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Concussion Care Continuum

June 2, 2015

The concussion care continuum is of equal importance from start to finish, but some of the stops along the way are more in the MHSAA’s area of influence than others, so they are receiving more of our attention.
We would never say that removal-from-play decisions are more important than return-to-play decisions. However, because the removal decisions occur at school sports venues by school-appointed persons, while the latter are made at medical facilities by licensed medical personnel selected by students’ families, the MHSAA is giving the removal process more attention than the return.
This helps to explain why the MHSAA is orchestrating pilot programs where volunteering member schools will be testing systems during the 2015-16 school year that may assist sideline personnel at practices and contests when assessing if a concussion event has occurred and that player should be withheld from further activity that day. The buzz that these pilot programs is creating will increase everyone’s attention on improving sideline concussion management. For more information, click here.
The MHSAA has always believed it shared a role with local schools and health care facilities and professional organizations of coaches and school administrators in the education of coaches, athletes and parents. This remains our first and foremost focus on the concussion care continuum.
But the pilot programs, and more specific requirements beginning in 2015-16 to report head injury events, demonstrate that the MHSAA is moving further along the continuum to assist the entire concussion management team. As we do so, our focus is on all levels of all sports for both genders, grades 7 through 12, with attention to both practices and competition.

News Unfiltered

July 12, 2017

During the first summer after my college graduation, I was the campaign advance man outside of the Milwaukee and Madison areas for a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin. A great job.

Sometime during that summer, I met the head of the campaign in a café. He was reading a newspaper as I arrived; and as I sat down at the table, I asked him what he was reading. I’ll always remember his response. He said, “I’m looking for what could go wrong today?”

It was the campaign manager’s job to think about worst-case scenarios and consider how the campaign might get taken off message by the news of the day.

I was young and impressionable, and I soon began to consume the daily news through the same filter.

It was not difficult to do so in the 1970s. The daily newspaper was printed and delivered to my door every day. Television had just three networks, and each provided brief news reports two or three times a day.

Today, what passes as news comes from hundreds or thousands or millions of sources and it is changing constantly, 24/7/365. Only a small portion of those sources is professionally operated with accountability for the substance and/or style of the so-called reporting.

Today it drives me nuts to consume news – that is, to really think about what I’m reading or hearing the way I did in the 1970s. Today, meaningful matters often get buried in trivia while the most inane and inaccurate stories and comments can go viral overnight.

I’ve always said you can get too much of a good thing – too much food; too much free time; and certainly, too much sports. And clearly, we have too much “news” about sports.