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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.)
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Suspicious Solutions
January 17, 2017
Fifty-two weeks ago yesterday I had hip replacement surgery on my right side. My recovery was so speedy that most people outside the offices of the Michigan High School Athletic Association never noticed, and I was back to my normal activities and workouts very quickly.
But gradually during late summer and then dramatically in early November, my body reacted. It has been giving me pain from hip to foot on my left side, a limp I can’t disguise, and a metaphor for this message.
It appears that correcting one thing adversely affected another thing; and the second problem is much more painful than the first one was.
So-called solutions often have unintended consequences, worse than the original problem. For example:
- Every expansion of the MHSAA Football Playoffs has had an effect opposite of what was intended. Each has added additional stress on local scheduling and league affiliations; and each expansion has increased the likelihood of repeat champions.
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Seeding MHSAA Basketball Tournaments, seen by some people as a solution so that the best teams will square off later in the tournament trail, will have those same consequences – stress on scheduling and leagues, and more repeat champions.
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Relaxing requirements for cooperative programs once seemed like a good thing, but now it is more frequent that schools take the easy route – sending their students off to play on another school’s team – rather than doing the hard thing – providing and promoting the sport themselves. The former provides far fewer participation opportunities than the latter – the opposite of the intended purpose for cooperative programs.
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Charter schools and School of Choice policies were supposed to force schools to improve through competition, but this “solution” devastated neighborhood schools. These policies didn’t “empower” parents, they created estrangement between schools and communities.
I could go on. The point is, my limp is a reminder to be on the lookout for the new problems inherent in so-called solutions.