Jeremey Soehnlin: Belleville West Football Players

With each throw to home plate he felt a little bit more pain. Instead of resting him Mark Hyman sent his son out to pitch the very next game. Stories like these are not uncommon with anyone who child has played on any team. Over the last few years, adults have taken over kid’s sports. Many children under the age fifteen required medical treatment for sports injuries and nearly half of them are only the result of simple overuse. The quest to turn children into superstar’s are taken a toll on their

In any sport there will be injuries, however with the NFL the risk of getting injured is higher than any other sport. Players in the NFL are likely to get a concussion. It could be the physicality of the sport. Football has a

Football changes lives in positive and negative ways. Injuries become quite prevalent in the sport, but I still take the risk every time I step on the football field. According to CNN, in 2014 eleven deaths found their way into the paper as a direct cause from football injuries. An example includes seventeen-year-old high school senior Andre Smith from Bogan High School situated in Chicago Illinois. On October 23 2014, Andre Smith played his last

But alas, Miss Sifferlin's goal wasn't to be logical or analytical. The goal of her paper is to appeal to parents and coaches about the ramifications of letting kids “play through pain”. Sadness wells up for the amount of children affected by concussions, worry for their safety, and hope that more precautions will be taken. It's not the most delicate of subjects to talk about, but it is one that she broaches with the same type of seriousness and finesse that most will find refreshing.

Some schools with strong sporting traditions reinforce participation in sport. The sports that students are encouraged to participate in can depend on the school’s history and traditions, the facilities and equipment available, and the expertise of the teachers.

Football is game of speed, strength, and strategy. The best way to be a better player is working on becoming bigger and stronger while maintaining the speed, but when the players mass, strength, and speed all get better the forces the can produce a greater force with their hits. According to Timothy Gay, Physics professor at the University of Nebraska and author of The Physics of Football, a Defensive Back at the average one-hundred and ninety pounds that runs a 4.56 forty-yard dash can produce sixteen-hundred pounds of tackling force, which easily can break any bone of the human body. Due to the extreme forces the players are exposed to, it is necessary for each player to wear pads that help reduce and spread out the forces, and helmets

On September 9th, 2007, tragedy struck as the Buffalo Bills’ tight end, Kevin Everett, broke his neck on the 2nd half kickoff against the Denver Broncos. The injury was caused by a helmet to helmet hit on the Denver Broncos’ kick returner, Domenik Hixon. Head and neck injuries like these continue to be a threat to many football players. Many solutions have been tried, but none have made a significant impact on the safety of the game.

The topic of most concern for both parents and school board members is the risk of injuries. Tackle football may be fun for children, but the hits can be hard, resulting in excruciating injuries that can have long lasting effects that aren’t fully understood, such as reason as to why some kids don’t recover from a single injury or why some children have more catastrophic

According to Vincent E. Schaller from Philly.com he feels the problem should be solving the problem of concussions, not blaming football for the cause. Some Orthopedic surgeons are taking a stand recommending that members of their profession avoid team sponsorships, standing on the sidelines, and even performing sports physicals for high school and college players. Dolphins wide receiver Brian Hartline said, “With the defenseless receiver rule, now you have defenders making the conscious decision to go very low on a play when tackling. I would much rather have a bang-bang hit to my head than have someone dive at my knee. The improvements to the helmets have skyrocketed over the years, but the protection to the knees has not evolved at all. Jeff Miller, the N.F.L.’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, said, there is a direct link between head injuries and football. However, the N.F.L spent millions of dollars in research and to USA Football, a formerly obscure nonprofit, to promote safe tackling and reassure jittery parents that football’s inherent risks can be mitigated through on-field techniques and

Many players will not follow the rules until they can relate to them. Someone will need to be brought in to talk to the players about what happens when they do not tackle correctly; serious injury can be caused to not only the player who is tackling, but also to the person that is getting tackled. The story of a football player named Inky Johnson helps describe the heartbreaking effects football injuries can have on players. Johnson’s mother gave birth to him when she was only fifteen years old. Johnson grew up in a poor home with eight other siblings, but he did not let that stop him from pursuing his dreams (Inky Johnson). Johnson, from a young age, told his older cousin that he wanted to play in the NFL. The two worked at it for years by running from light pole to light pole until a coach came to the street and signed the two up for organized sports. Johnson fought off injuries his whole high school career and received a scholarship to the University of Tennessee (Inky Johnson). Things were going well until it came to the third game of his junior year when he came up to hit someone and he blacked out and fell to the ground. Johnson´s teammates tried to get him to get up but he was unable to move. Johnson severely damaged his right arm, tearing all of his nerves (Inky Johnson). Now he lives with a paralyzed arm. This would be the end of Inky Johnson´s chase of his NFL dream on the football field. Kids do not think about this happening to them, they just play the game, but

“If only she knew then that her son would be dead at 25. Joseph hung himself in his mother's shed on June 7, 2012. His brain was later found to have severe CTE, a degenerative brain disease that has been linked to concussions in football. Joseph Chernach had played sports, including wrestling, pole vaulting and football most of his young life. But he spent almost four years playing Pop Warner football from ages 11 to 14.” When you get concussion after concussion it repetitively traumatizes your brain and it can lead to CTE it means Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy it is a brain disease found in athletes, veterans, and others with a history of concussions. That's why i think little kids shouldn't play in rough sports it can give concussions that affect them for a lifetime(...or the lack thereof), parents have unrealistic expectations, and its too force on to them if they are young

Carson, the starting football quarterback for Westlake High School, stumbled upon many impacting collisions as he began to play in a highly competitive conference. Carson realized that the more tackles he encountered that they were significantly unlike his past experiences with hits in his old conference. He also noticed distinguishable symptoms that could send a player to seek medical attention. Despite his circumstance, Carson refused to get assistance and continued to participate in physical activity. The reason for his actions come from the mindset that many athletes sustain in competitions, especially sports that require greater physical actions. Carson believed that as an athlete he was trained to be resilient, and was adapted with the

Connor Garcelli is a senior at Chino Hills High School. While at CHHS, Connor participated in football for the Huskies. He played freshmen football but in the middle of that season Connor was asked to play for the varsity team, because they were low on offensive linemen. Connor would earn his varsity letter as freshman. While also being the starting left tackle for the freshmen team who went 9-1 and won the league title. After his freshmen, year Connor worked his way into the starting lineup for the varsity football team. He started at left guard that season and was always in the starting lineup for the rest of his high school career. The next season Connor was the left guard for what many people think is the best offensive line to play at

Playing football is not like playing other sports. Athletes in all kinds of sports risk injuring themselves, but in football, a lot of the risk comes from other athletes. While there are many ways to be injured playing football, one of the worst is head-to-head targeting. This has been a problem in football since the beginning of the game, especially, when equipment was not very protective. Over the past eight years, the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has implemented rules and penalties specifically designed to protect players and to hopefully reduce the number of bad head injuries (Marshall). The NCAA is doing the right thing by protecting players from severe injury by calling and enforcing targeting penalties.

Jonathan continued to play football and no one noticed his impairments, the next game he played in, he was struck in a head on collision. Jonathon could not get up and stayed on the field waiting for help. He was very confused and dizzy and could not recall what happened. This caused him to develop second impact syndrome, which is a result of having multiple brain injuries before the chance of healing. Jonathan now has very severe brain injuries because he continued to play football with an injury instead of undergoing the healing process.