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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 –

  • 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.

  • 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 –

  • 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.)

Future Actions

February 19, 2016

MHSAA committees have prepared not quite two dozen recommendations for Representative Council action later this spring. Once again this is a smaller than average number of proposals, and again they are modest in scope and significance. What has been different in recent years, and especially this year, is the length and depth of discussions by some of the committees.

Slowly, we are changing committee focus from tournament tweaks and other strictly transactional business to more strategic, even transformational issues.

Several committees talked longer than ever about health and safety issues, with attention to concussion and sports specialization, and how to accommodate and appeal to younger grade levels (6th, 7th and 8th).

I look forward to the day when these long discussions turn into provocative proposals. For example, I would love to hear that ...

  • The MHSAA Football and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend MHSAA sponsorship of flag football at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.

  • The MHSAA Soccer and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend practice and game policies that reduce heading at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.

  • The MHSAA Golf Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed, Ryder Cup format golf.

  • The MHSAA Tennis Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed team tennis.

There is so much more we could be doing to transform school sports for the 21st Century. New sports and formats, with increased attention to health and safety and the junior high/middle school level. This is our future, when talk turns to action.