On Sunday, a 13-year-old boy in Maine will sit in front of a TV and cheer on his team. He’ll exult when the team scores a touchdown, and probably pump his fist in the air when the team’s defensive lineman crunches the other team’s running back. When he gets into high school, that boy may play football and revel in the joy of scoring touchdowns and delivering bone-jarring tackles on opposing halfbacks.
But the football experiences of a 13-year-old boy in the other corner of the country should inform the way Maine student athletes play. Last June, in Covington, Wash., Zack Lystedt, now 18, struggled but succeeded in rising from a wheelchair to accept his high school diploma.
While making a tackle as he played on his middle school football team, Zack suffered a blow to the head. It was the second hit to his head that day, and unbeknownst to his coaches, he had sustained a minor concussion on the first hit. That first concussion set him up for a serious brain injury, one that left him unable to speak for a year. Multiple brain surgeries followed. Through years of therapy, Zack is relearning how to eat, talk and move.
The tragedy is that his traumatic brain injury was entirely avoidable.
Thirty-one states have adopted laws to protect students from Zack’s injury. Maine could soon join that list. LD 98, sponsored by Rep. Don Pilon, D-Saco, directs the Education Commissioner to develop a protocol for schools to address head injuries. The bill, which passed the Education Committee unanimously last week, is co-sponsored by Rep. Ed Mazurek, D-Rockland, who played in the NFL in the early 1960s.
David Krichavsky, a community affairs officer for the NFL, said that the laws in other states consist of three key components: educating school officials, parents and athletes about the threat; removing a student athlete from competition if a concussion is even suspected — “When in doubt, sit him out,” is the rule; and requiring an athlete with a head injury to be evaluated and cleared to return to play by a physician trained in assessing such injuries.
Dr. Paul Berkner, director of health services at Colby College, said physicians are not always up to speed on assessing head injuries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a four-hour, online course for physicians and others, he said.
Maine has not been immune from sports-related head injuries. And they’re not all suffered in football games.
Two years ago, Bangor High School’s Katie Brochu suffered a concussion while playing basketball. After being cleared by a physician to return to play, she again collided with another player. Even though her head wasn’t hit, the injury affected her severely enough to send her to the hospital.
In 2010, a cheerleader at Poland Regional High School was injured when she was thrown 20 feet into the air but not caught by her teammates. The medical response focused on her neck and spine, which were sprained. But later, the girl began displaying the symptoms that typically follow traumatic brain injury.
Young brains seem to be especially vulnerable, and, as was the case with Zack, the second injury seems to pose a far greater risk.
So, as the Giants and Patriots figuratively butt heads in the Super Bowl, we should be reminded of the risks of such injuries, and the responsibility of schools to protect those young brains.
Teenagers appear strong, resilient, and in some cases fully mature, but the truth is that the human body is not complete until the middle 20’s. The last piece to mature is the brain. Neurotransmitters which tell the body to work, and return with messages of weariness overexertion and even pain have not fully formed. Often young people are told to “shake it off” after a traumatic event. Most often they are able to do this, but even a small accident, at the wrong time can be debilitating and even fatal. When I was young a boy whom I knew was getting out of a car, and hit his head against a parking meter causing an egg sized bump on his head. He “shook it off,” and even laughed about it. That night he went home, complained to his
parents about dizziness, and went to bed. The next morning his mother found him on the floor, next to his bed unable to move. he died at the hospital later that day.
The N.F.L has finally begun to look at old head injuries in their former players, and what they have found would scare a football playing teenager’s parents to death. A significant number of these players, years after they have stopped playing, have developed brain based maladies (like Parkinson’s disease) they have had early strokes, and been debilitated. former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson, committed suicide after being diagnosed with CTE a degenerative disease increasingly found in football players and other athletes who have absorbed repeated blows to the head.
I swore off playing sports when I was about 10 years old because the other kids would get into fights with me over something as stupid as a basketball or football game. I regularly got an D+ in physical education for lack of participation, even though I could do 50 push-ups in just about two minutes when I was in high school. Games are supposed to be fun, which is why I don’t have a problem with video games.
I’ve never got hurt over a video game. I’ve been verbally threatened, but never injured from actually playing a video game. Even the verbal (and typed) threats don’t bother me, because 99.9% of the time the person doesn’t even know my real name or where I live, so it’s not a big deal. Plus, I know that even when I hear threats or cursing, I know it’s just people blowing off steam from getting pwned. Headshot lolz!
Slow day for editorials-Super Bowl is this weekend so there must be something wrong with football.