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Dangerous Plays

February 26, 2013

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The MHSAA’s fourth health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on competition rules.  It intends to locate the most dangerous plays in each sport and to try to reduce their frequency.  For example:

  • We know that kickoff returns, punt returns and interception returns – plays in the open field with a change in direction – are the most dangerous football game situations.

  • We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.

  •  We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.

  • We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.

  • We know that ACL injuries in female basketball players and volleyball players is near epidemic and wonder if there is equipment or conditioning that can be mandated or recommended to save our players from what are serious and sometimes career-ending injuries.

We can make changes ourselves – through MHSAA sport committees – for the subvarsity level, but our committees can only make recommendations to national rules committees for varsity level play.  Over the next four years, we will be asking our sport committees to give more time to the most dangerous plays in their sport – identifying what they are and proposing how to reduce that danger.

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.