A roll of athletic tape in and of itself is mundane, unexceptional. But the moment it’s needed to wrap sore joints before or during a sporting matchup one realizes there is a science behind knowing how to rip the tape and wrap it quickly. That’s where athletic trainers become most visible and necessary.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new recommendations Oct. 25 regarding the enforcement of safe tackling and the prevention of injuries. These recommendations include making officials and coaches responsible for enforcing the rules of proper tackle technique, and making skilled and trained athletic trainers (AT) available on the sidelines.
These recommendations come from the increasing exposure of the dangers associated with head trauma caused by the sport of football. There have been 11 deaths resulting from football injuries during high school games this year, according to NBCNews.com. There have not been deaths from football in the Orange Belt in recent memory, according to California Interscholastic Federation director Jim Crichlow.
Teaching children early in life how to tackle properly will help them avoid unsafe habits early on, but the counterargument points to more contact and abuse on the body from a young age, according to the AAP. The issue with concussions in football has reached the main stream consciousness, with a film starring Will Smith called “Concussion” addressing the dangers of concussions within the National Football League as one of several examples. It’s an uncomfortable issue, one Porterville Unified School District athletic director Rich Rankin called a “Catch-22.”
Rankin also ceded something has to change with safety if football as we know will continue to be a school sport in the future. He said “it’s not headed in the right direction.”
“It’s just a growing trend of catastrophic injuries,” he said. “We’ll have to see certified doctors on the sidelines of every game.”
In an effort to reduce the risk of both concussions and general injury in the past few years, the state of California and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) have placed some regulations that limit the amount of time high school programs can practice in pads during the week. Put into place before the 2014-15 season, CIF programs are only allowed 18 hours of practice and contact time per week. The limit on the amount of football contests during the preseason and regular season is set at 10, which was set before the start of the 2015-16 season. Teams are allowed one scrimmage that does not count as a contest.
While there has been efforts to regulate practice time, Porterville head coach Carl Scudder said there should be attention regarding the modification of equipment. He believes discarding face masks on helmets would greatly reduce the amount of head injuries because kids would no longer want to enter a tackle face first.
“The kids wouldn’t have that plastic bubble around their faces,” he said.
Though removing the face mask could reduce the number of head injuries in football players, said Dr. Cynthia LaBella, chairperson on the Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, it could also increase the risk of facial injuries. After all, a football helmet was never designed to prevent concussions; they’re designed to reduce the risk of skull fractures. They will never stop the momentum of the brain as a result of jarring hits in football. Knowing this, LaBella said the focus should go away from changing equipment and head towards rule changes, where the CIF has already made changes.
“Rule changes have a much bigger impact on injury rates than equipment changes,” she said. “Every attempt should be made to modify the rules.”
As for ATs tied to football programs within the Orange Belt, Strathmore and Granite Hills high schools do not have certified and trained ATs. Porterville is one of three football programs that can say it has some sort of AT, Wendy Thomas-Dummar, but it is a volunteer position. Normally employed within the Burton School District, Thomas-Dummar is in her second season with Porterville, and she assisted the Granite Hills program for four years. She’s taken a trauma class normally taken by EMT students at Porterville College specifically to study the effects of football injuries and how to treat them. She will start the College of the Sequoias’ Sports Medicine program in the fall as well.
Monache calls upon Leo Cantu for its athletic training needs, and Dr. Joel Ramirez, a practicing doctor with an office in Porterville and a Lindsay High School alum, appears at all of the Cardinals’ home games and treats, diagnoses and dresses injuries to the football team for free in his own time, according to head coach Matt Mendonca. However, there is no AT tied to the Porterville Unified School District, said Rankin. Having previously had Thomas-Dummar tied to his program, Granite Hills head coach Marc Salazar said having an AT on your sideline is immensely beneficial.
“When you have a good trainer you play healthier,” he said.
The CIF mandates football coaches be trained in CPR and be able to recognize a concussion, but the coaches are not specially trained in diagnosing and treating sports injuries. Crichlow said coaches are required to go through that training every two years or whenever their first-aid card expires.
The presence of an ambulance at a football game isn’t mandatory, but one must be on-call for the game to start. However, the CIF mandates a doctor must be present and on the sideline of playoff football games, according to Crichlow.
According to a study conducted between 2006-09 by the Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, schools whose basketball and soccer programs did not have an AT available to them experienced injury rates six times higher than those schools whose programs did have an AT. However, the concussion rates for schools with an AT were eight times higher as well. Dr. LaBella said that is because schools without an AT did not have the knowledge or skills to diagnose a concussion, so naturally the rate would be much higher with someone who can diagnose that. The study administrators also hypothesized that schools with higher socioeconomic standing typically had more access to ATs than those with lower standings.
If ATs are so beneficial, how many schools across the country have access to one? In a study conducted by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association whose results were published in the Journal of Athletic Training in February of this year, researchers contacted 14,951 public secondary schools in the U.S. to see if they offered AT services for their sports. Of the 8,509 schools that responded, 70 percent reported having AT services, though most (63 percent) did not provide full-time services for all sports, games and practices. Additionally, 27 percent of those schools that responded reported offering services through a clinic.
Rankin said each football program within the district gets a stipend for nine football coaches. A head varsity football coach with at least 11 years of experience can earn approximately $5,600 per season, and a first-year head coach can earn approximately $2,900. There is nothing set aside for a specialized AT. According to the U.S. Department of Labor as of May 2014, the mean annual wage for an AT across the nation is $45,730. That number rises to $50,170 in California. In order to have one AT for all sports tied to PUSD, Rankin said it would take some coordination to make the utilization of that trainer fair for all teams.
“It’s definitely something we would look at,” he said. District administrators and school athletic directors touched on the topic at the end of 2014, but a district AT is not being considered at this time, according to Rankin. Though there has been some discussion, there are no imminent plans to bring in an AT for the district. As with all things, Rankin said the financial implications of hiring an AT are a big reason why this plan is not a reality.
While coaches have some training, Strathmore head coach Jeromy Blackwell said he’d rather have someone on his side who is much more knowledgeable than he is when it comes to treating injuries.
“It would be much better to have a person who knows how to do those things,” he said.
Not only is an AT good for diagnosing or preventing sports injuries in real time, Dr. LaBella, with Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, said it would be useful for schools and districts to work with ATs in order to create emergency action plans for a truly catastrophic injury in any sport.
“If you’re going to have a sports program,” she said, “the budget needs to be there for an athletic trainer.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.recorderonline.com/sports/trainers-on-sidelines-equal-safety-on-the-field/article_8b49db76-8cec-11e5-9eca-db2eadf41536.html