After two North Carolina high school football players died in 2008, following head injuries, the association of which high schools are a part became really serious about concussions and policies to deal with them. One precaution that's known to be smart is to have a certified athletic trainer on staff. Such professionals are trained to diagnose and help with more than first-response care, and there's little disagreement as to their value when it comes to football injuries in particular.
So why, after the tragedies of 2008, do more that half of this state's high schools not have certified trainers despite recommendations from sports safety groups and from Kevin Guskiewicz, chairman of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at UNC-Chapel Hill? Guskiewicz is one of the nation's foremost authorities on the subject, and he's a hard-liner when it comes to certified athletic trainers.
As The N&O's Tim Stevens reported, the reason most schools haven't hired the trainers is simple: They don't have the money. The legislature had bills in last year to require and fund trainers, but budget problems took care of that. Given the events of 2008, that could be a tragic bit of budget-cutting.
If a school doesn't have a trainer, Guskiewicz says, it should have to eliminate football, boys and girl's lacrosse, soccer and wrestling.
Amen to that. The safety of young people is more important than anything else in a school's athletic program, period. Certified trainers help protect them in the face of known risks, so there must be certified trainers. Period.
Fans from the state's high schools could raise money privately, or add something to ticket prices. Perhaps medical groups and hospitals in a given area could chip in. Or here's a thought: How about a hand from the state's private and public universities that have huge athletics programs? (UNC-Chapel Hill, after all, is about to engage in a football stadium upgrade in the tens of millions of dollars.)
Ample evidence shows that multiple concussions can have serious implications later in life. And though equipment has gotten better in terms of protecting football players, concussions simply can't be prevented.
No unnecessary chances need be taken, however, and that means every school gets a certified athletic trainer, or shuts the stadiums and the fields down before one more game is played, before one more kid is hurt. We dare say that, faced with that prospect, the money for trainers will quickly be found.
