Brain injuries penalize football at all levels
-
Physical therapy resident Pam Dunlap examines Gaige Pavlocak during an evaluation at the UPMC Sports Medicine Center on Pittsburgh's South Side. Gaige, a sophomore football player at Southmoreland High School, suffered a concussion in a preseason practice.
Share with others:
Fourteen 10- and 11-year-olds from the Peters Township Indians White team gathered under cover for their final practice last week, chased indoors Thursday by rain and sodden football fields.
The youngsters were practicing plays and more for about an hour before finishing with a routine one-on-one drill on tackling fundamentals. Routine as long as no one got a concussion during the final drill again.
One player from the White team -- the Peters Township Junior Football Association's age-group squads are named after the Washington County school district's colors -- has been sidelined for the season's opening three games because of a concussion.
Another, 10-year-old Nick Young, has missed five consecutive games: Three already this year because of a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left knee, and the final two last season because of a concussion.
Rick Young watched Nick, his son, miss those final two games of 2009 -- amid e-mails from the coach pleading, "Can he play this weekend?" -- and then endure two months of concussion-induced emotional and academic turbulence in the fourth grade. That experience motivated Dr. Young, a podiatrist, to become an at-large board member and safeguard the association's 225 young brains.
Parents, players, organizers and regulators are becoming aware of a widespread problem that doesn't belong solely to NFL Sundays. Concussions happen during youth football and college Saturdays, high school Friday nights, and practices all days, down to tykes of 6.
To bring awareness home to Peters, Dr. Young attended the Duquesne University symposium that attracted national concussion experts in March. He collated data about ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing), the process overseen by UPMC and used by the National Football League, the National Hockey League and others. He drafted the association's policy and steered parents to UPMC Sports Medicine's South Side headquarters, where almost half the Peters kids took the baseline test that could prove beneficial in the event of a brain injury.
Shawn McCall, president and a coach in the Peters association, took his four children to the South Side for the computerized test. That included his 10-year-old son who swims.
"The cost is nominal," Mr. McCall said of the $40 regular and $20 group-discount prices for each test. "How much is your kid's brain worth? Come on.
"No pun intended, it's a no-brainer."
Eighty-seven West Allegheny High Indians, freshmen to seniors, gathered on a grass field for practice Wednesday afternoon while the seventh- and eighth-grade unified team used their stadium next door. One sat in a wheelchair -- star Mike Caputo, recovering from a fractured, dislocated ankle. Others were absent due to neck, shoulder and knee injuries.
The team's headaches came early this season. They went, too -- never developing into the symptoms of concussions. They were just headaches.
First Published September 19, 2010 12:00 am
