High School Head Injuries
Its homecoming game we’re up by two points with only one minute remaining, our defense is on the field and our opponents are driving down the field hoping to win. In the final seconds their quarterback threw the ball to their star wide receiver, he stared running down the field towards the end zone. Our safety Juwan was coming to save the day and get the win for us. No one anticipated their wide receiver to trip and fall, as this happened our linebacker came full speed into Juwan, neither of them saw each other. Juwan fell and didn’t get up. I picked him up and carried him to the sideline freaking out wondering what happened. He wasn’t responding to anyone, we rushed him to the hospital to make sure he was ok. It took two hours before we found out if he was ok. We soon found out that he had got such a severe concussion that he could no longer play football, every dream he ever had of playing football at the next level gone in one play.
Everybody knew at least one football player in high school. Some of you may have dated one or maybe he was your best friend, no matter how you knew him, you would never want him to get hurt right? This is important because if this is fixed high school football players will no longer be reduced to having to someone help them walk or even eat. To be honest I never took too much time out of my day of life to really think about concussions and or head injuries until it happened to my friend Juwan. I thought about how this could have been prevented and how I or anyone could have helped, so I stared researching and what I found was very interesting.
In my speech today I would like to talk about the problems with high schools and how they treat head injuries. How we can better prepare our young athletes for hits and how we can maybe prevent these types of head injuries.
There are three major issues with head injuries. The fact that high school trainers don’t know how to properly diagnose concussion and what may happen later on if they don’t do it correctly, no matter how badly an athlete is injured they try to hide how hurt they are and don’t tell the trainer, and finally how we could possibly reduce the impact to a players head.
One of biggest issues with head injuries is the trainer not knowing how to properly diagnose concussions. Fewer than half of high schools have a certified athletic trainer in concussion awareness. “40% of players continue to play despite having a concussion. 16% were allowed to return the same day they had been knocked out cold.” CNN reporter.
- Second impact syndrome or SIS occurs when a players gets back to back concussions resulting in deadly brain swelling which in most cases destroys the brain and that person can no support themselves and will need help for the rest of their lives. In very rare cases this syndrome can cause death if both concussions were severe.
- Post-concussion syndrome or PCS isn’t as bad as SIS. PCS can effect a person for days, weeks, or even years. This