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Head Trauma and Learning

November 23, 2012

Researchers at my alma mater have joined their voices to the growing chorus of concerns about the effects of repeated blows to the head.

A study of the cognitive effects of head impacts on members of Dartmouth College football, hockey, track, crew and Nordic ski teams compared before and after season results on learning and memory skills.  Participating athletes also came from Brown and Virginia Tech.

  • 22 percent of athletes in contact sports had lower results on learning and memory skills tests after their season.
  • Only 4 percent of athletes in non-contact sports posted lower test results.

The researchers caution that it is unknown at this point how long these negative effects may last, but they also note there is some correlation between test results and how hard the athletes were hitting heads.

This adds to the mounting evidence that rules writers, program sponsors, coaches and officials must look for and implement a variety of measures to reduce the frequency and severity of head impacts in both practice and competition in all sports.

The Imperative of Institutional Control

March 13, 2018

Of the various criticisms about the MHSAA’s handling of transfers, these three have the ring of some validity:

  • The Transfer Rule is too complicated.

  • The Transfer Rule is poorly understood at the local level, and thus unevenly administered.

  • The MHSAA office is ill-equipped to police the transfer scene.

The language of the Transfer Rule has expanded from a few sentences to many pages over its 90-year lifetime. This is the result of changes in schools, sports and society, as well as people operating at the edges of the rule, which has led to a rule that has attempted to cover more circumstances with more specificity year after year.

This increasingly nuanced rule takes both training and time. The MHSAA does an excellent job of providing training online and in person, but local administrators are not putting in the time – they can’t! They are usually less experienced but given more non-sports duties than athletic directors of 10, 15 and 20 years ago; and they are leaving the profession after shorter careers. They often lack the training and time to do the complicated and potentially contentious tasks, including Transfer Rule administration.

Overwhelmed local athletic directors are not shy about contacting the MHSAA office for assistance in interpreting and applying the Transfer Rule. These incoming questions dominate the time of MHSAA staff who have many other duties, including the administration of MHSAA tournaments in 14 sports for each gender.

Lacking sufficient staff time and subpoena power, the MHSAA must depend on local school administrators to police their own programs, communicate with their neighbors, and report what they believe might be violations within their own and nearby programs.

While we keep working on the language of the Transfer Rule, we harbor no illusions that it will become simpler to understand and enforce. That’s just not how the modern world works ... everything becomes more complicated. Which may only make it more unlikely that schools will dedicate the time and talent necessary to assure that the principle of “institutional control” is practiced by MHSAA member schools.

However, if we give up on that principle, no amount of oversight by the MHSAA office will ever be enough to police school sports in Michigan ... not just to monitor transfers, but also to attend to the dozens of other elements that distinguish educational athletics.