Post by SoccerMom on Sept 3, 2015 9:53:34 GMT -5
I'm not necessarily agreeing with this article...just sharing...
It’s time to open our minds to the perils of heading in soccer.
The body of evidence about hits to the head — impacts from a 16-ounce ball travelling at high speed, or mid-air collisions between two teenagers vying for the ball — has become the elephant in the soccer stadium.
Parents and players still think of soccer as the peaceful sport, the non-contact game that celebrates skill over force. But soccer is stuck in time, the only major game that deploys the human head as a piece of equipment to torque the ball at high speed.
Professional football was first to face the fallout from concussions. The National Hockey League belatedly confronted illegal head hits and unsanctioned fights.
Yet soccer still relies on outdated rules codified in Victorian-era Britain some 150 years ago — before the insidious effects of concussions were recognized and brain scans even invented.
Soccer purists admire the contortions of professional soccer players whose timing and technique allows them to head butt a corner kick into the goal. But there is no shortage of soccer stars who have been diagnosed with debilitating concussions or long-term cognitive deficits — and launched lawsuits after the fact.
The more pressing public policy challenge is how to protect our children, especially young children — hundreds of thousands of whom are rushing headlong into this wonderful game, oblivious to the obvious peril.
It’s not just outright concussions but undetectable sub-concussive injuries that can have a cumulative effect over a player’s lifetime — and to which younger players are far more susceptible: Children are less skilled and experienced in judging the impact and trajectory of a ball; they are less dexterous and less reactive; and they have weaker neck muscles to support a head that is proportionately larger relative to their body (and heavier, but with a softer skull) compared to adults.
There is growing evidence that concussions are on the rise, especially among female players. A 2013 study in the Radiologyjournal Radiology found that “repetitive subconcussive head trauma in the setting of heading during soccer may be associated with white matter microstructural and neurocognitive changes similar to those seen in patients with traumatic brain injury.”
A Brain Injury2014 study in the journal Brain Injury, led by Dr. Tom Schweizer, head of neuroscience research at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, found that soccer was the second-leading cause of concussions for girls. “The practice of heading, which might occur thousands of times over a player’s career, carries unknown risks, but may uniquely contribute to cognitive decline or impairment in the short or long term,” Schweizer concluded.
Across Europe, parents and players are talking — and litigating — about soccer’s open secret: the unavoidable risk from repeatedly heading the ball throughout one’s youth. The U.S.-based Sports Legacy Institute is campaigning for a ban on heading until age 14 or high school, which it cites as the leading cause of concussions in middle school soccer players.
Yet on Canada’s soccer fields, the controversy over heading has gained little traction. Nothing will change until societal complacency changes.
In the 1960s, hockey players eschewed mouth guards and avoided helmets, and goalies hadn’t invented facemasks. Bike helmets were embryonic and only racers wore ski helmets. Seatbelts were an afterthought.
Watching my own kids play soccer (or at BMO Field), I wince when a bare skull connects with a fast-moving ball kicked halfway across the field. And worry that one of the players will collide with another as they vie for the ball in mid-air (unlike baseball players, who make a point of calling for the ball before they catch it to avoid the risk of collision).
We didn’t know absolutely and precisely how badly smoking was decades ago — one puff didn’t kill, but a lifetime could. Heading isn’t smoking, but it’s time to cut through the haze.
And start using our heads.
We now know that it’s not good for the brain to ricochet inside the skull every time the head absorbs an impact — whether from boxing, football, a fast-moving ball or a sudden collision.
Diehard coaches claim that mastering the right technique eliminates head injury, but are we really that closed-minded? It defies logic to argue that the cumulative impact can be minimized even after hundreds or thousands of head hits a year — whether through cumulative minor traumas or occasional accidents.
Is it worth the risk for children? How much longer must they be held hostage by the rules of the game, designed in the 1800s?
www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/02/why-heading-the-ball-in-soccer-is-so-wrongheaded-cohn.html
It’s time to open our minds to the perils of heading in soccer.
The body of evidence about hits to the head — impacts from a 16-ounce ball travelling at high speed, or mid-air collisions between two teenagers vying for the ball — has become the elephant in the soccer stadium.
Parents and players still think of soccer as the peaceful sport, the non-contact game that celebrates skill over force. But soccer is stuck in time, the only major game that deploys the human head as a piece of equipment to torque the ball at high speed.
Professional football was first to face the fallout from concussions. The National Hockey League belatedly confronted illegal head hits and unsanctioned fights.
Yet soccer still relies on outdated rules codified in Victorian-era Britain some 150 years ago — before the insidious effects of concussions were recognized and brain scans even invented.
Soccer purists admire the contortions of professional soccer players whose timing and technique allows them to head butt a corner kick into the goal. But there is no shortage of soccer stars who have been diagnosed with debilitating concussions or long-term cognitive deficits — and launched lawsuits after the fact.
The more pressing public policy challenge is how to protect our children, especially young children — hundreds of thousands of whom are rushing headlong into this wonderful game, oblivious to the obvious peril.
It’s not just outright concussions but undetectable sub-concussive injuries that can have a cumulative effect over a player’s lifetime — and to which younger players are far more susceptible: Children are less skilled and experienced in judging the impact and trajectory of a ball; they are less dexterous and less reactive; and they have weaker neck muscles to support a head that is proportionately larger relative to their body (and heavier, but with a softer skull) compared to adults.
There is growing evidence that concussions are on the rise, especially among female players. A 2013 study in the Radiologyjournal Radiology found that “repetitive subconcussive head trauma in the setting of heading during soccer may be associated with white matter microstructural and neurocognitive changes similar to those seen in patients with traumatic brain injury.”
A Brain Injury2014 study in the journal Brain Injury, led by Dr. Tom Schweizer, head of neuroscience research at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, found that soccer was the second-leading cause of concussions for girls. “The practice of heading, which might occur thousands of times over a player’s career, carries unknown risks, but may uniquely contribute to cognitive decline or impairment in the short or long term,” Schweizer concluded.
Across Europe, parents and players are talking — and litigating — about soccer’s open secret: the unavoidable risk from repeatedly heading the ball throughout one’s youth. The U.S.-based Sports Legacy Institute is campaigning for a ban on heading until age 14 or high school, which it cites as the leading cause of concussions in middle school soccer players.
Yet on Canada’s soccer fields, the controversy over heading has gained little traction. Nothing will change until societal complacency changes.
In the 1960s, hockey players eschewed mouth guards and avoided helmets, and goalies hadn’t invented facemasks. Bike helmets were embryonic and only racers wore ski helmets. Seatbelts were an afterthought.
Watching my own kids play soccer (or at BMO Field), I wince when a bare skull connects with a fast-moving ball kicked halfway across the field. And worry that one of the players will collide with another as they vie for the ball in mid-air (unlike baseball players, who make a point of calling for the ball before they catch it to avoid the risk of collision).
We didn’t know absolutely and precisely how badly smoking was decades ago — one puff didn’t kill, but a lifetime could. Heading isn’t smoking, but it’s time to cut through the haze.
And start using our heads.
We now know that it’s not good for the brain to ricochet inside the skull every time the head absorbs an impact — whether from boxing, football, a fast-moving ball or a sudden collision.
Diehard coaches claim that mastering the right technique eliminates head injury, but are we really that closed-minded? It defies logic to argue that the cumulative impact can be minimized even after hundreds or thousands of head hits a year — whether through cumulative minor traumas or occasional accidents.
Is it worth the risk for children? How much longer must they be held hostage by the rules of the game, designed in the 1800s?
www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/02/why-heading-the-ball-in-soccer-is-so-wrongheaded-cohn.html