Category: Secondary School

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Trustees Ignore community concerns for sports safety

Teton County School District No. 1 trustees agreed at their July 8 meeting that the district does not need to hire a full-time athletic trainer.

The announcement was made in response to a petition that was submitted to the board of trustees at the June 10 regular meeting.

“The petition policy we have requires us to take some action on the petition within 30 days,” Trustee Kate Mead said.

Each committee on the school board did research before trustees made their decision.

Trustees on the Planning and Development Committee, for example, decided to see if other schools that are in the same athletic division as Jackson Hole High School are staffed with full-time athletic trainers.

“The only school of our size that has a full-time athletic trainer is Star Valley,” Mead said. “That full-time athletic trainer is also a teacher.”

Mead said the committee learned that some of the schools have part-time trainers and that some of the trainers are volunteers, not paid employees.

“Some of them simply have volunteer athletic trainers,” Mead said. “There will be a person in the community who is an athletic trainer or physical therapist who donates their time.”

Trustees on the Performance Monitoring Committee studied the district’s budget to see what it pays to have a part-time athletic trainer.

The district spent about $22,000 to provide its students with an athletic trainer for fiscal year 2015.

Mead said it’s a little too late to change the budget for fiscal year 2016.

“This petition was brought to us very late in the game, when we were already budgeting,” she said.

Trustees also asked for input from Superintendent Gillian Chapman and Activities Director Mike Hansen. Chapman and Hansen agreed that right now the district does not need a full-time trainer.

“We could have done another budget exception,” Mead said. “It says a lot when the administration is telling us that they believe that the needs of the students are being met with a part-time athletic trainer.”

The discussion of whether to hire a full-time athletic trainer came about this spring when the board of trustees received a letter from parent and physical therapist Scott Harmon.

“He sent us a strident letter saying we are endangering the safety of our kids by not having a full-time athletic trainer,” Mead said.

Trustees feel confident that the district’s athletes are in good hands with their coaches and a part-time athletic trainer. Mead said the trustees and other district employees always take concerns of student safety seriously.

“When people talk about child safety it makes us nervous,” Mead said.

She said that right now the district does not have an opening for a full-time trainer.

“We simply haven’t had full-time athletic trainers,” she said. “I don’t think we will in the future unless our school gets much bigger.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:                                                         http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/jackson_hole_daily/local/trustees-will-stick-with-part-time-trainer/article_7f2dfc4d-f71d-510e-be15-62e357c47941.html

 

 

 

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Rohling leads county athletic trainers

Lawrence County native Brad Rohling is often visible on the athletic sidelines.

But he is not a coach or athlete.

He is an athletic trainer at Central Magnet and is the coordinator of athletic training outreach for NHC Rehabilitation and TOA (Tennessee Orthopedic Alliance). Rohling took his undergraduate work at MTSU and graduate work at Auburn.

He worked with Auburn football for four years when Tommy Tuberville was the Tigers coach.

Rohling recently spoke with the DNJ about his role with Rutherford County athletics:

How many athletic trainers cover Rutherford County’s schools? And what are their responsibilities?

We have 10 that cover 10 high schools. All 10 have bachelor’s degrees. Five of them have completed their master’s. And five are currently enrolled in master’s classes.

They are responsible in covering any varsity, junior varsity or freshman sport.

What is your role, outside of being the athletic trainer at Central Magnet.

I oversee the other nine athletic trainers in the county. I oversee, manage and supervise and deal with any issues we have with any of those guys.

High school practices have begun across the state. What do you recommend athletes do to make sure they stay hydrated now?

It’s preparation. You have to pre-hydrate. You have to hydrate the day before, two days before going into it. You have to prepare yourself for what you are about to get into. You need to be smart and not practice in the middle of the day. There is the TSSAA heat policy that says we can’t go out if it is a certain temperature. And there is the recovery time. You need to get the proper rest and the proper food.

What type of meals and how much rest should athletes be getting now with practice starting?

It’s a lot more food than what you think because athletes are burning so many calories and using so much energy during the day. Proper food — stay away from any fast food. Grilled chicken sandwiches and things like that are good. Drinking fruit juices, Gatorade and water. They need to stay away from sodas and Kool Aid. There is too much sugar in that.

And how much rest do athletes need now?

For sure, they need to get the proper amount of rest. I wouldn’t stay out all night. I can’t put a number on it.

Concussions are a big concern these days. If an athlete receives a blow to the head, how can an athlete and parents monitor their athlete to make sure there isn’t a concussion? What are the signs?

Part of the Rutherford County concussion policy gives parents information as to what to look for. If they are sleeping a lot more or a lot less. If they are irritable or sensitive to light or noise. If they have nausea and aren’t acting right, those are potential signs. We put a lot on the parents because they know their kids; they see their kids at night and after practice. That’s part of the education packet.

Is everyone doing baseline testing for concussions in Rutherford County?

Everyone is.

What is baseline testing, and how important is it to monitor concussions?

Impact testing is just that, a baseline test. It’s not a cure. It’s not going to prevent a concussion. It’s not going to help them get better. You get a baseline as where that kid is for short-term memory, long-term memory and reaction time. Then, if a kid receives a concussion, they can take the test and it measures the results against what the baseline test result was.

With so many practices and sporting events going on during the school year, how do athletic trainers cover all of the teams?

There have been studies done as far as rate of injury. Football has the most injuries. Football is the priority. But soccer is a priority over volleyball just because it is a contact, collision sport. It’s based on the rate of injury.

What are the most common injuries during a high school season?

There are a lot of ankle injuries and shoulder injuries during the season just because of how the body is and how the joint is. The more movement you have in the joint, the looser it is.

How important is it for an athletic trainer to get to know the high school athlete?

That is a crucial part of our job because I can tell if something is going on with that kid. Even with a concussion, you can tell if he’s not acting right. Or if there is something else going on, I know the kids. In our role, a lot of times they feel more comfortable telling us than they will their coaches. We kind of have to be the go between. We have to sometimes play the good-guy role and also sometime the bad-guy role. That is a huge part of our job — is getting to know the kids.

Overall, how good are the coaches in Rutherford County to work with?

I think we’ve got the best coaches in the state. They understand that we’ve got a job to do, and that is to protect those kids. With all of the concussion legislation going on, they are definitely going to defer to our opinion on things. We generally don’t have any issues with coaches getting upset.

What is the best part of your job?

The kids, the coaches and the level of competition in Rutherford County.

What is the worst part of your job?

The way our program is set up, a lot of times the people that work for me hit two years and go work somewhere else. I enjoy watching those guys grow. As soon as they get to be a high-level athletic trainer, they leave and go somewhere else.

Contact Tom Kreager at 615-278-5168 or tkreager@dnj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Kreager.

Meet Brad Rohling

Who: Coordinator of athletic training outreach for NHC Rehabilitation and TOA

Age: 38.

Family: Wife: Amber; daughter: Stella, 6 months old

Education: Lawrence County High School graduate. Bachelor’s in athletic training at MTSU. Master’s in higher education administration from Auburn.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:                                                                                             http://www.dnj.com/story/news/2015/07/11/qa-rohling-leads-county-athletic-trainers/30015753/

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Athletic Trainers are Key to Concussion Management

Athletes under the age of 18 are the most vulnerable when it comes to sustaining concussions. Accurately diagnosing concussions on the field of play is an important way to protect them, according to research published this month in the Journal of Child Neurology.

“The continued play by a child who has sustained a concussion puts them at significant increased risk,” said Jacob Resch, associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and co-author of the study. “To keep a concussed child from continuing to play requires immediate and accurate diagnosis.”

Every state but one requires youth athletes suspected of having a sport concussion be removed from play and not allowed to return without written clearance from a health care provider. But, according to Resch, many young athletes are playing without the elements in place needed to accurately diagnose a concussion during a game.

The article, “The Acute Management of Sport Concussion in Pediatric Athletes,” provides a clinical framework for the assessment, evaluation and management of pediatric sports concussions.

One key element: the presence of an athletic trainer or trained clinician at sports events.

“Diagnosing sport concussion requires specific training,” Resch said. “Think of it as a medical specialty that not necessarily all general practitioners or pediatricians are well versed in. There is a range of assessments used in diagnosing concussions and each of them requires specific training.

“The best person to have on a sideline is someone who has specific training in this area, most often seen in a certified athletic trainer.”

Young children often play sports in youth leagues, while adolescents often play in club or school sports. Currently, the only data collected on the presence of athletic trainers is on high school sports, where only 46 percent of high schools have a full-time athletic trainer. In many of those cases, a single athletic trainer is responsible for all of the school’s teams.

In other cases, schools or programs may share an athletic trainer or hire an athletic trainer or clinician to temporarily work a tournament or series of events.

“At this point, we just don’t know how many youth sports are being played with a certified athletic trainer or clinician trained in diagnosing concussions on the sidelines,” Resch said.

In the absence of someone specifically trained to diagnose and treat concussions, the role is often filled by an emergency medical technician.

“EMTs are a vital member of the sports medicine team,” Resch said. “However, EMTs may receive limited training in concussion assessment.”

In the article, Resch and co-author Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher of the University of Michigan reviewed the reliability and validity of assessment tools currently used to diagnose concussions. They recommend these tools be used alongside a clinical evaluation.

Another element needed to accurately and immediately diagnose youth sport concussions is a precursor to the first: taking a baseline measurement of the elements assessed to diagnose a concussion before a young athlete is injured. These elements include a balance test and recording the typical number of headaches a child has per month.

“One challenge in diagnosing concussions is that we are often measuring how a concussion manifests itself in other symptoms in the body,” Resch said. “Because no two children are alike and no two concussions are alike, it is difficult to say a particular score on a particular assessment always means a concussion is present or not.”

Knowing how a child scores on a balance test prior to play gives the individual making the diagnosis a sense of how far from that baseline an injured child is currently scoring. To know a child’s baseline often requires parents to seek a supplemental physical with a sports concussion clinician.

“Parents can certainly ask their pediatrician if they have expertise in diagnosing concussions,” Resch said. “If they don’t, they can often recommend someone who does.”

Preseason is a good time for concussion education, the authors suggested. Many states require student-athletes, their parents, coaches and administrators to participate in concussion education before the start of the season. However, those sessions vary significantly across ages, leagues and states.

Resch and Kutcher recommend that whatever the format, the content should include what signs and symptoms of concussion will lead to the player’s immediate removal from the field of play.

Though increased media attention has led to an added emphasis on the response to and management of concussions, the researchers noted that data is significantly lacking on youth sports concussions and called for more research.

“We need to continue to examine the data around concussions in youth sports and use that data to improve our efforts in education and recommendations for keeping young athletes safe,” Resch said.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:                                                                                                       http://www.healthcanal.com/brain-nerves/65450-study-immediate-diagnosis-of-concussions-better-protects-youth-athletes.html