Football related injuries are very common in the fall. Athletic trainers deal with sprained ankles
to concussions to broken bones. It’s a
lot to handle if you are an athletic trainer at a high school with 300+
athletes to deal with. I know when I was
in the high school setting, I was always loaded up with football injuries along
with boys’ and girls’ soccer, volleyball, cross country, and field hockey
injuries – and that was just the athletes in season in the fall. I was also dealing with wrestling, boys’ and
girls’ basketball, boys’ and girls’ lacrosse, and many other sports. It was overwhelming, especially being the
only athletic trainer in the school. If
you are the only ATC at your school, you knew what I dealt with. Concussions were the most prevalent they had
ever been, and they were very tedious to rehab back. But what if you were at a school where
catastrophic injuries were prevalent?
There have been so many deaths that I have been reading about in high
school football this season - 13 totaled so far. I would like to discuss some of these catasrophic injuries. I know it's a heavy subject, but it needs to be addressed.
-On July 7th, 2015, Collin Kelly of Indiana died after passing out from heat stroke at preseason practice.
-On September
4th, 2015, Tyrell Cameron of Louisiana died returning a punt in his
high school football game. On September
19h, 2015, Ben Hamm of Oklahoma died from an injury he had suffered in a
football game a week prior.
-On September
26th, 2015, Evan Murry of New Jersey died after getting hit in the
back during a football game.
-On October 23rd, 2015, Andre Smith of Chigaco died after
suffering a hit to the head in his high school football game the day
before.
These deaths make all of us in
the profession feel for the athletic trainer that has to deal with these
catastrophic injuries. It is sad to
learn, though, that in the incidence of all of these untimely deaths, not all schools had athletic trainers.
It makes one think.. would the other injuries have been handled
differently if there were athletic trainers on the sideline? Especially when it came to the preseason heat related injuries. If there was a liscensed athletic trainer at practice, they would have been able to detect the heat indexes at practice and been able to stop activity. There should not have been one death from heat illness. That is very preventable. However, when it comes to being hit in the
head, no athlete should die from that either. I
believe, if there was an athletic trainer at these schools, the hit to
the head deaths would have never happened.
Usually when someone has a catastrophic blow to the head, it is resulted
from a previous hit to the head that was not healed. This is called Second Impact Syndrome. If there was an athletic trainer at these
schools, they would have been able to recognize the initial hit to the head and
the second hit would have never happened.
It is so unfortunate that there are many schools without
athletic trainers that could prevent catastrophic injuries like the ones
above. There are only 37% of secondary
schools that have athletic trainers. Think
of how many of these deaths and other injuries could be assessed,
rehabilitated, and even prevented if the number of athletic trainers in high
schools increased. We, as an athletic
training community, mourn these young adults, even if they are not our own
athletes. It is a sad statistic, and
hopefully one day the school districts will realize how valuable we are.
Please read the following article for more information.
http://www.people.com/article/high-school-football-deaths-experts-reasons-why-help
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