NFHS Voice: Emphasis on Education
January 20, 2020
By Karissa Niehoff
NFHS Executive Director
Sometimes, numbers or statistics in sports can be misleading or perhaps even meaningless. Often, they simply do not tell the whole story.
Such was not the case, however, with the massive number of 10,000,000 announced last week by the NFHS. As in 10 million online education courses that have been taken by high school coaches, administrators, officials, students, parents, performing arts educators and others since the inception of the NFHS Learning Center in 2007.
When we talk about the difference between education-based sports within our nation’s high schools versus out-of-school club sports, this says it all. And the quest for more continues to rise each year.
After starting with 15,000 courses in 2007, more and more people have utilized the Learning Center (www.NFHSLearn.com) on computers, tablets and smartphones. The number of courses jumped to 200,000 by 2010 and 1,071,000 by 2015 and almost two million (1,975,000) last year.
While there are now more than 70 courses available through the NFHS Learning Center, including more than 35 that are offered at no cost, the runaway success story has been the free Concussion in Sports course that was launched in 2010 and updated in 2018.
With more than five million Concussion in Sports courses delivered in almost 10 years, the NFHS has been the leader in concussion recognition and management. This course teaches how to recognize a suspected concussion. It provides protocols to manage a suspected concussion. It provides steps to help players return to play safely after a concussion.
As a result of educational initiatives such as the Concussion in Sports course, and NFHS playing rules in all high school sports that contain guidelines for management of an athlete who exhibits signs and symptoms of a concussion, to the creation of concussion laws in every state, there are positive trends in concussion rates.
And that leads to some more meaningful numbers.
Data from the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study released late last year indicated that concussion rates during football practices dropped from 5.47 to 4.44 concussions per 10,000 athletic exposures between the 2013-14 and 2017-18 seasons. Repeat concussion rates across all sports declined from 0.47 to 0.28 per 10,000 exposures during the same time period.
The annual increase in the number of individuals taking education courses on the Learning Center, which also includes the popular free courses Heat Illness Prevention and Sudden Cardiac Arrest, indicates – at least in part – the insatiable desire on the part of parents to determine the actual risk of playing contact sports.
And more and more when it comes to football – this country’s most popular contact sport – we believe the inherent risk has never been lower.
From the youth level where USA Football has created the Football Development Model to reduce contact and teach fundamentals in a progressive manner, to the educational initiatives of the NFHS to reduce injury risk in high school sports, the focus on player safety has never been higher.
And one more important number. We believe this continual rise in the number of people taking online education courses will have an additional benefit – a growing number of high school students competing in education-based sports and activity programs.
Dr. Karissa L. Niehoff is in her second year as executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is the first female to head the national leadership organization for high school athletics and performing arts activities and the sixth full-time executive director of the NFHS, which celebrated its 100th year of service during the 2018-19 school year. She previously was executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for seven years.
Ultimate Teammate, Ultimate Captain
October 1, 2012
By Jed Blanton
MSU Institute for the Study of Youth Sports
What does it mean to be a team captain?
When I was in high school, our team captain was the best runner. There was no vote, no question. The best runner after the team time trial took over for the year. They led stretches, told the freshmen what to do, and did their best to stay in front of the pack.
And that’s what I did when I emerged first in our time trial. It was my team and my season now. The position was a status, a marker of my dominance, and a free pass to be a jerk. And I did it well.
When I went to college on a cross country scholarship, I was at the bottom of the totem pole again, and was nervous about how my captains would treat me and what a year it would be adjusting to college training and racing … while carrying the water and catering to our top runners. I wanted to be the fastest, so that it would be my team.
But in college, the team voted for our captains, and along with our coaches’ consensus, a leader was chosen. It wasn’t the best runner. Our team time trial had nothing to do with it. In fact, our women’s team captain didn’t even score for our team.
I asked one of the seniors, and one of the fastest runners, why these people had been chosen when there were several people faster. They answered simply, “They earned it, I respect them, and don’t mind being told what to do by them.”
I learned throughout the course of the year that the captain of this team had a lot to do, far more than I had ever done in high school ... when I thought I knew how to be a great captain.
When I earned the captain’s position on my college team my senior year, after a less-motivated try at captaincy my junior year, I had a completely different outlook on what needed to happen. For one, I wasn’t the fastest on the team anymore. An injury had prevented me from a successful offseason training regimen. But it was a new role and new challenge that I decided to have some fun and make my senior year memorable. But how could I make my team successful, even if it wasn’t by running fast?
That year I spent more time with the freshmen than I ever had, even more than when I was a freshman myself. I went to the dining halls, and invited them to my house for dinner. I went running with them on the weekends, and didn’t mind not being with the fastest guys on the team. I took an interest in our women’s team and how its training and experience was going. I went to study hall, which was an enforced weekly gathering for freshmen and anyone with lower than a 3.0 grade-point average, although I was about to graduate with honors and had twice been named “major of the year” in my department. I learned that being a captain was not a prize reserved for one person to selfishly hold. Being a captain meant being the ultimate teammate.
Since my college cross country days, I’ve spent the last six years in graduate school, researching and studying team captains. I’ve learned more about the position than I ever thought possible, but nothing I’ve read or discovered has been as powerful as seeing what it’s like to be respected as a captain. I keep in touch with far more teammates from my senior season than I do with anyone who graduated before me. Being a captain is far more than a title; it’s a calling. I whole-heartedly believe that anyone can become a great captain. They are made, not born. The difference is those who want it and those who don’t. Earning the captaincy position is not a status symbol, it’s not a recognition; it’s a job with a long task list.
The best captains I’ve met are the most organized, and also the most caring teammates. Placing the team before themselves is not the cliché; it is expected. And while I never was busier as an athlete than my senior year of college, I’ve never appreciated any other athletic achievement more than the friendships I made and the experiences I had leading my team through our season.
Blanton is a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University in the department of Kinesiology, specializing in the PsychoSocial Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity, and a research assistant for MSU's Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. He has served as a facilitator at MHSAA Captains Clinics the last three years and currently is assisting the association with its student leadership programs.