Is Your Youth Sports League Ready For a Medical Emergency?
Plus, more news to digest from the worldwide web of youth sports.
Every few weeks, I like to share some youth sports news that has recently captured my attention. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of bodies trying to tinker with this world for better or worse. Let’s take a little jaunt…
Does your sports league have an emergency action plan?
Buffalo Bills trainers Nate Breske and Danny Kellington know a bit about emergency care. They were paramount in saving Damar Hamlin’s life after he collapsed amid a game last January. It was later determined that the cause of Hamlin’s collapse and cardiac arrest was a rare condition called commotio cordis, which occurs when a massive blow to the chest causes the heart to stop pumping blood efficiently.
Fortunately for Hamlin, the Bills and the NFL invest heavily in medical personnel, training, and equipment. These proactive measures literally saved Hamlin’s life. Unfortunately, most high schools, youth sports leagues, and individual coaches have minimized investment in life-saving tool. Whether due to lack of resources or priorities, it’s important to consider how ready your kid’s team is for an emergency. Speaking at an athletic trainers conference this week. Breske and Kellington are urging all parties in youth sports to have an adequate emergency preparedness plan.
“If that's your child and something happens and there's nobody there to help, how upset would you be just for lack of funding or lack of knowledge?," Kellington said.
A look at the hard numbers makes the message even more urgent.
Per the National Athletic Trainers Association, only 37% of America's public high schools have full access to athletic trainers despite statistics showing 93.4% of sports-related deaths in children are caused by sudden cardiac arrest.
So what can we as parents do? A few ideas:
- Ask your league’s board to make sure every team has at least one representative at each practice and game trained in CPR (yes, that means coaches will likely need to undergo CPR training)
- Ask your league to invest in a few AEDs (automated external defibrillator)
- Tennis players, ice skaters, skiers, make sure your coach is prepared
- Be ok with a fee increase to cover
Managing youth sports in the summer
Interesting and extremely relatable look at the craziness of summer youth sports from The Reformed Sports Project. Long live the days when young athletes could slow down and enjoy the unstructured play that was inherent with summer break.
It’s technically still possible, but then they’d miss out on this elite camp or this showcase, not to mention all the summer training and tourneys, depending on their sport and level. Definitely some food for thought here.
Nike’s quest to increase girls participation in sport
Participation numbers for girls in sports are plummeting once they reach puberty. According to Always, the menstruation brand, nearly one in two girls drop out of sports. Nike is looking to reverse course through a sizable increase of female coaches who can serve as general role models while guiding these young women through this unique phase in their lives. CoachingHer, launched by Nike, along with The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, is offering a robust series of free coaching modules.
On the subject of female coaches, be sure to read our recent piece on the Women’s Coaching Alliance which is guiding young women to build leadership skills through coaching. Is there any better initiation to leading a company than mastering the art of handling an unruly kid or demanding parent at a young age?
Drink up, kid
Thank you, iSport360 for this important reminder on proper hydration for youth sports athletes.
Calling all parents of pitchers (Or any other super stressful sports position)
Yep. She is us. We are her.
In closing
I’m headed out to Cooperstown next week for my 12-year-old’s “baseball trip of a lifetime.” For the uninitiated, it’s a mega-tournament where 60-70 teams descend on the the birthplace of baseball from all over and down under. Literally, there’s two teams coming from Australia! The players stay in a bunk house all week with their teammates and coaches bonding over pin trading, whiffle ball-playing, eating junk food, and all kinds of shenanigans we’re better off not knowing about. If any readers have been and have tips, would love to hear from you. I’ll be writing some type of guide/offering my own tips for future Cooperstown players and families upon my return.
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