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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.

Inclusion

February 24, 2017

School sports enjoyed its highest public profile in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was before competition from televised college and professional sports and proliferation of youth sports programs and myriad entertainment alternatives. But school sports has its greatest reach today. This is the era of inclusion.

This began with the near simultaneous expansion of opportunities for boys in a greater variety of sports and the reintroduction of similar athletic opportunities for girls.

The increased focus on the junior high/middle school level and the new opportunities for 6th-grade students to participate either separately or with and against 7th- and 8th-graders are major developments in this era of inclusion.

This era includes exploration of opportunities for students with an ever-widening understanding of physical, mental and emotional conditions that challenge students’ ability to participate in highly competitive and regulated athletic programs. It includes accommodations for students with documented changes in gender identification.

This era of inclusion includes reexamination of rules that limit students’ access to school sports while understanding that much of the value of school sports is a result of the rules for school sports. We know that if we lower the standards of eligibility and conduct, we tend to lower the value of the program to students, schools and society.

This is really the best time ever for school sports. It’s just a lot harder to operate today than 55 or 60 years ago.