The official football practice season is still quite young in South Carolina. High school athletes in the Palmetto State got back out on the field on Friday for the first practice of the season. However, in other states, practice had already started, and in some cases, had tragic endings.
A player in Indiana died earlier in the month at football practice, and on Wednesday, a 16-year-old in Tennessee died after a practice where the heat-index reached 109 degrees.
At several of the local schools on Friday, athletic trainers were on hand to help assure the safety of the athletes returning to practice. In the case of Silver Bluff and Midland Valley these trainers came from the Georgia Regents Sports Medicine Outreach Program, which provides certified athletic trainers to recreational, high school and college sports teams.
Longtime Midland Valley athletic trainer Ashle Cooper, who started the educational efforts of the program in Aiken County, said a big part of keeping the kids safe on the field is educating them about proper nutrition and their bodies.
“Heat-wise, obviously we talk to them about hydration. That’s your No. 1 defense against heat-illness, making sure you’re properly hydrated,” Cooper said. “Coming out here on little to no food or little to no fluids is setting yourself up for disaster. We preach pre-hydration. They have to start before they get to practice.”
Cooper’s coworker in the program and Silver Bluff athletic trainer Christina Haupt, who head coach Al Lown called a huge help to have on the sideline, added that being dehydrated is like a domino effect when it comes to rigorous practice during a season.
“If they’re out here from Monday to Friday and Monday they already come out here dehydrated, on Tuesday it just spirals downward. By Wednesday or Thursday, they’ll be nauseous, dizzy and throwing up,” Haupt said.
Passing on information like that is a vital part of why Cooper said it’s important for every school to have an athletic trainer on staff, not just someone who shows up on Friday night for games. The reality of the situation, however, is that many schools can’t afford to have the type of athletic trainer Cooper refers to.
Cooper offered up some helpful tips for those athletes in the area that may not have the trainers on staff to educate them. She said athletes should eat carbs before practice. Carbs provide the energy for pre-practice. She also said it’s important to take in a protein after practice to help muscles recover. In addition, having a fruit and vegetable as part of a post-practice meal is advised.
Another big part of keeping the athletes safe are the various regulations put on practicing. The South Carolina High School League provides safety recommendations to all high school coaches and athletic directors to make them more aware of how to handle situations.
“Obviously all teams don’t have trainers, so you cant force them into doing anything, but these are adults out there leading students. We expect them to conduct their practices in a way that will keep athletes safe,” said Bruce Hulion, who is in charge of sports medicine and health related issues at the SCHSL.
At football practice, athletes gradually add layers as the first few days go by in order to allow the players’ bodies to get acclimated. On Friday, teams were only allowed to wear helmets. No team in the state is allowed to practice in full pads until Wednesday.
While regulations now exist for many safety risks in youth sports, it took a while for some of those rules to be put into place officially. One of the biggest health issues in the game of football has been concussions, and South Carolina was the second to last state to pass a youth concussion law in 2013.
Both Midland Valley and Silver Bluff take extra steps to assure the athletes safety by performing baseline neurocognitive tests on each athlete which gives the cognitive levels of an uninjured athlete as a tool to aid in recognizing potential concussions or brain injuries.
Cooper said laws and regulations have been especially important in Aiken, where there are many schools in rural areas where the closest medical facility is a great distance away.
“The laws and rules make everybody accountable. In the state, all of the coaches have to take a concussion safety test, and they have to complete education on a yearly basis,” Cooper said. “If I were a football coach, I wouldn’t want to be making the medical decisions for my athletes, but unfortunately sometimes they may be put in a position where they have to be involved with the medical aspect out of necessity. That’s where it becomes important to have the laws and training.”
Student athletes who suffer from a concussion must go through a seven-step return-to-play protocol before returning to action. They must follow up with a physician who is trained in evaluating concussions and then must pass each step symptom free. Once an athlete gets to the fourth step of the return-to-play protocol, the trainer conducts another neurocognitive test and compares that to their baseline test. At that point, the trainer has that information coupled with the sideline concussion assessment done at the time of injury. All of that information is then sent to a physician to look over all of the testing and the athletes progression. Trainers do not allow athletes to go back onto the field of play until they have a signed SCHSL form from an authorized medical proffesional. The SCHSL stipulates that only a medical doctor or doctor of osteopathic medicine licensed to practice in South Carolina can release an athlete diagnosed with a concussion to return to competition.
Once an athlete is returned to contact, they have to complete a full practice without any symptoms of the concussion before getting approved to play in a game.
“You have to monitor them closely. Kids can sometimes not realize that they’re having symptoms because there are so many symptoms associated with concussions that can mimic other things,” Cooper said. “Sitting them down and educating them about the dangers of it and educating the parents is a pretty lengthy process. It’s definitely worth it though. You only get one brain.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20150801/AIK0301/150809958