National Alliance for Youth Sports –
SportingKid Magazine
Fall 2007
SAFETY ADVANCEMENTS
In the late '70s Dr. Carl Abraham was busy interviewing former middle school and high school football players who were paraplegics and quadriplegics to determine, in part, the causes of their horrific injuries. After speaking with roughly 20 athletes he became emotionally invested in their heart-breaking stories, which led to him patenting the flexible face-mask that was licensed and manufactured by Riddell in the early '80s.
"The face-mask I invented for use with the football helmet was related to a need to reduce the risk of paralyzing injuries to young children," Abraham says. "The steel face-mask the children were using weighed over a pound, did not absorb and dissipate forces and was much too heavy for young children. As a result, their heads and necks sagged and were prone to flexing extensively during a tackle, resulting in fractures of their spines. By cutting the weight in half and allowing the facemask to absorb and dissipate some of the impact forces, we were able to eliminate the paralyzing injuries that were caused by impact to the facemask during a tackle. Since the players started to use the facemask there have been no reported spinal injuries."
These days Abraham, well-known for his expertise in the area of head injuries and concussions, serves as the technical director for Forcefield, makers of the popular headbands touted to reduce the risk of head injuries and concussions for children participating in soccer.
"I feel that as a parent and grandparent, that we have a responsibility to offer our children as much protection as possible and reduce the risk of foreseeable injuries when they participate in a contact sport," Abraham says. He points to the results of independent tests performed in the United States and Canada that the headbands reduce the risk of head injuries to children and that the impact forces to the head are significantly reduced when a child wears these headbands.
"I commend the people who have the passion for developing these and I hope they stay the course and push their products, because in the end it may make a difference," Guskiewicz says. "But until it's proven to make a difference I'm real cautious about promoting their use to prevent concussions and prevent that second concussion. The jury is still out."
These days, leaders in the sports industry are well aware of the seriousness of the issue when it comes to protecting kids' heads, and are doing their part to continually upgrade the quality of equipment that kids wear.
"We take this issue very seriously," says Thad Ide, vice president of research and product development at Riddell, Inc. "We're in the business of protecting kids. That's what we do. The march toward providing improved protection keeps going on."
UPGRADING THE SIDELINES
Every year millions of dads and moms step forward to volunteer to coach youth sports. Though well-meaning and good-intentioned, many don't know how to teach kids some of the sport's skills, which increases the risk of injury. That's of particular concern in contact sports, where the proper way to tackle in football, head in soccer and check in hockey and lacrosse is crucial to helping youngsters sidestep concussions and other equally serious injuries.
"It's wonderful that parents are jumping out on the field and that they want to be involved in their son or daughter's activity," says Guskiewicz, a father of three young boys involved in a variety of sports. "But probably a lot of them are ill prepared as coaches. I've been studying concussions for 15 years but I never played soccer, so I'd be the last person you'd want teaching a child how to head a soccer ball. We need to be better at developing clinics and putting money into training parents how to coach kids." 
He is also a proponent of having more certified athletic trainers at the youth level - at YMCAs, parks and recreation departments, Little League and Pop Warner - to get advanced medical training on the sidelines to better manage injuries.
"The largest number of participants is at the youth level, yet they have the least amount of expertise on the sidelines with knowledge of how to recognize and handle head injuries," says Rossi, whose company will soon release its Schutt Concussion Awareness Program, an initiative aimed at educating volunteer coaches. "Every coach at the youth level should know the signs of recognizing symptoms that a player may have sustained a concussion and then knowing what to do about it."
Studies on concussions abound, and there is enough information on the topic to fill a library. The most recent tragedy - the suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, who had multiple concussions during his career and later suffered from depression - has further commanded the public's attention. Research on more than 2,500 former NFL players by the University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of Retired Athletes showed that players who had at least three concussions had triple the risk of clinical depression compared with those who had no concussions.
The Florida Institute of Technology has completed two years of an ongoing five-year study it's doing on concussions and heading in youth soccer players ages 9-13. "We have used direct observation of competitive games to gather our data so we are not relying on self reports," says Dr. Frank Webbe, professor of psychology. "We have had only two concussions occur, which is good news for all concerned. We have noted, however, that children report headache and dizziness from heading the ball about 50 percent of the time, which is much greater than reported in studies of adolescents and adults."
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PATENT NOS.: US 6,675,395, US 6,978,487 & US 7,234,174. OTHER NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL PATENTS PENDING