Straight Talk on Head Trauma
May 6, 2013
Bill Heinz is the handsome square-jawed, plain-speaking medical orthopedist from Maine who chairs the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee of the National Federation of State High school Associations. Here, in my words, is what Dr. Heinz had to say about concussions last month in Indianapolis in a ballroom full of staff members and attorneys for statewide athletic associations from across the United States.
About Prevention –
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No equipment can prevent concussions in any sport. What can reduce such head trauma is to diminish the frequency and severity of contact to the head.
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In football, that requires officials’ strict enforcement of current rules, coaches’ teaching of blocking and tackling consistent with those rules, and rules makers’ continuing search for ways to reduce the frequency of the game’s most dangerous situations.
About Aftercare –
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No pharmaceutical remedy exists for concussions. The remedy is time. Only complete rest – from both academic and athletic activity – begins the recovery process; and then return to such activity must be gradual, and under the care of trained health care professionals.
That has been and will continue to be our message to our constituents in Michigan.
(Click here for our recent communication reinforcing the state laws that take effect in Michigan on June 30, 2013.)
Hard Fun
June 22, 2018
One of the features that attracts students to school sports is that competitive athletics is “hard fun.” Most students want to have fun, and most students ascribe greater value to that which doesn’t come too easily.
I don’t think we change much as we mature. We continue to value most the things that require effort ... the activities which, when completed, feel like an accomplishment.
It’s why I cherish my recent high altitude hike on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu ... the hardest physical challenge I’ve had since double-session football practices in high school and college.
It’s why coaches often will say their favorite season was the .500 record with over-achievers, not the conference championship with under-achievers.
It’s why students will return to class reunions this summer, 10 and 20 years after their graduation, and compliment especially the teachers and coaches who required the most of them as students and athletes.
What the very best classrooms and competitive athletic and activity programs do is challenge students. They push students to discover that they can move beyond where they thought their limits might be. They encourage students to explore their capabilities and to experience the joy of exceeding their expectations.