More ominous signs for high school football
"Dr. Steve Horwitz, a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic medical staff and the founder of an organization called TeamSafe, cast doubt on administrators’ claims that football is safer than ever because of increased concussion concerns.
He wrote: “63 percent of public high schools and 78 percent of private high schools lack even one full-time athletic trainer. ... Most schools do not have an Emergency Action Plan and those that do either do not have it posted, do not practice it, or both. …
“Parents simply drop their kids off at practice without asking the crucial question, ‘Is this coach prepared to handle an on-field medical emergency?’
“(While) ‘state law mandates that all programs adhere to concussion protocol’ none of these laws provide an implementation, documentation, communication and oversight system. The standard response of tossing information on a website won’t do it and laws are not a panacea.
“Somebody has to know when to have the child taken out, someone has to take the child to the doctor; someone has to have oversight over the entire process. There must be a safety system in place that gives coaches and parents immediate access to the critical information needed in those first 5-7 minutes.”
