Lately there have been many injuries in sports in our area.
Just the other day a senior football player was critically injured in a football game, ( so many of these lately )
We do not know his prognosis yet. It is very sad.
My children are young and love sports, and play many different sports. Now, I am scared. I worry for their safety. I think I would just die if something happened to seriously injure one of my kids. I cannot bear the thought of them getting hurt. Yes, I know they could get hurt doing just about anything… but tell me, are youth sports worth the risks?
I know that I’m just a kid and I couldn’t possibly know what it’s like for a parent but…
No offense intended…
I used to hate overprotective parents when I played soccer and softball. I was always the coach’s daughter, or at least my dad would usually be around to help out the coach. So my dad was always big on safety because he was aware of the dangers but he never went to extremes. The kids whose arents bought tons of protective padding and gear are the ones I felt sorry for. Being overprtective just ends up hurting the child more in the long run, they’e going to get hurt anyway, no matter what you try to do they will get hurt and it’ll just hurt more if they’re not used to it. I may have complained that my dad let me “walk it off” whenever I got hurt, but it helped me out later. Getting scratched up when sliding in softball or slide tackling in soccer was just a part of playing the sport, once you learned to do things right you stopped getting hurt very often. You need to fall off the horse before you learn to ride it. If you don’t let your kids pay sports it’ll take them longer to learn some life lessons. I learned alot of basic people skills when I played sccer and softball, those skills I brought with me all the way to highschool.
I think that youth sports are something that everyone should at least try. True, there’s danger in it, but what’s life for if you’re not willing to take risks?
Sporty Kitty
(note: I’ve played soccer and softball since I was 4, I’m now 15 and still playing soccer, I gave up softball when I started highschool because time and school wouldn’t allow it)
I’m still furious with my parents for not letting me play Pop Warner Football. I played HS ball and had a myraid of injuries, every single one of them was worth it. Don’t let your kids grow up in a bubble, they’ll be worse off for it.
Yeah its scary, but you and your parents all probably played sports and did alot of less safe things before the advent of plastics and litigation. Let them play whatever they want. If you want to give them a better chance of staying healthy, make them workout in the offseason and beyond what the coach expects of them. Lidfting weights and conditioning are the best ways to prevent injury.
I understand your fear. But, you have to weigh the risks. Of course you only hear about the bad injuries. How many kids played in that sport this year? How many were injured? How many kids were injured driving to and from games they attened as spectators? When I was in high school, the football team had no serious (life threating)injuries. A few broken legs. One broken arm. In the marching band, four students driving home from a game at night hit a cow. Three were in the hospital for more than a week and one took four weeks to recuperate enough to come back to class. The one who didn’t spend overnight in the hospital broke his arm.
As you can see, there are risks in everything. But, I would allow my child to participate in any sport that the risk of serious injury during a game was less than the risk of driving to the game. Being an instuctor at Prairie View A&M, I had this last stat driven home with a vengence last spring. We lost six track athletes to a van crash. In the history of our school, we have never had an athlete die as a result of injuries sustained during a contest.
Also, unless you keep your child indoors all of the time, they will play sports with other kids in the neighborhood. I know I did. Football without safety equipment is risky. I am amazed that we didn’t kill ourselves on the street.
As a whole, organized sports are safer. They have certain guidelines for what they can and can’t do. There is normally a trained health professional attending the games. Where I lived, even the Little League Baseball games had the local volunteer EMS ambulance standing by. Just in case.
If you worry about your childs health, try to guide them to the safer sports. I personally would try to guide them away from football even though I love to watch it. (To many knee injuries.)
Some of the best times of my life were spent in sports. I would regret not having those memories. I would say that they are worth it.
As for ballet, I know alot of dancers. They are getting injuries all of the time also. It just doesn’t make the news.
Stormi, as a parent and a coach, I would ask that you encourage and pray for not only your child but every participant.
Like most everything,sports has the risk of injury. And like most everything, there are rules in place to try to prevent injuries.
So support your athlete, let them know that you are there for them. Tell them to be careful, but to also have fun, thats why they are called games, because they are fun to play.
I understand your nervousness, Stormi, and I don’t want to add to your worries, but life-threatening injuries are the least of your problems in interscholastic sports.
Far, FAR more likely are soft-tissue injuries that won’t turn into chronic problems for years. Initial trauma is difficult to avoid, but it’s a very rare coach who doesn’t compound injuries by encouraging kids to tough it out and play through the pain. Watch the coaches. If you sense they’ll sacrifice your kid’s health for the sake of the won/lost record, have a heart-to-heart with the coach to get them to substitute when injuries hit or, failing that, get the kid to switch sports or find a substitute activity. Sports are helpful in learning life-lessons, but they’re hardly an exclusive channel.
Take it from a guy whose two knees, right hip socket and left shoulder don’t work all that well any more. And his nose moves in distances and directions it shouldn’t. Getting out of bed in the morning is, to put it kindly, an adventure. Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty was no bullshit.
Thanks, Coach M. That pain in my knee wasn’t a bruise; it was a shredded ligament. And that pain in my chest wasn’t a muscle-pull; it was pneumonia. And after twenty-one days in bed recovering from the pneumonia, a conference wrestling match on day twenty-two isn’t always the best therapy. And parents, not kids, are the best judge of that.
BTW, ballet’s no tiptoe through the tulips, either. A friend of mine was a ballet prodigy in her teens. She retired for medical reasons (ballet-specific) by the age of nineteen.
(credit Rita Rudner) “I had to quit ballet because of a groin injury. It wasn’t mine”
There are NO activities without risk (even reading can cause papercuts…) so, you do the best you can, steer your child(ren) away from paper bungee cord jumping and make sure their activites are as safe as possible.
I wasn’t meaning any kind of injuries…
Bruises, stubbing toes, broken bones, all these things we can deal with.
What I meant was more along the line of serious life threatning injuries - re: brain damage, paralysis,
death. THIS is what I worry about.
There have been at least 5 stories of high school football kids being seriously injured in our state alone with in the past 2 weeks. I’m talking very serious - one is paralyzed,
one has severe brain damage, and the prognosis for the others is still unclear.
My kids play all sports, and have been hurt many times, nothing serious, thank God.
Am I over-protective? Yes. ( But I really care about my kids! ) Am I too overprotective? I don’t think so.
I have never ever stopped any of my kids from playing any sport they wish.
It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again, those are five stories, but how many kids have played football? How many of those kids have never gotten seriously hurt? The injuries that you hear about are incredibly rare. People are all riled up about heading a ball in soccer, at least I heard a couple parents arguing about it a while back, they said some kid got brain damage after getting hit in the head with the ball. But don’t parents understand that for every kid that gets hurt there are at least a thousand that never get more than a few scrapes and bruises? I’ve been playing soccer for the past 10 years and starting the next season in November and in my entire life I’ve only known one girl who got seriously injured and although she did need some therapy and stuff she was back on the field the next season.
Remember ‘Four Weddings’….‘The Full (dire) Monty’………well, be afraid. With more hype than you can shake a hockey stick at, it’s coming to a screen near you soon:
And I wouldn’t be the man I am today ( :eek: ) without sports. Actually, I do think it’s important on a number of levels. And from a guys perspective, the whole male bonding thing shouldn’t be underrated - and mums can do that. Sport can be the foundation and common ground of some of lifes important relationships.
Underprotective parents are every bit as bad.Some parents don’t make sure their children wear the necessary protective gear.My son is ten and plays baseball and roller hockey.** I am amazed at parents who are shocked that the umpire won’t allow their son to catch without a cup, or who allow their children to play hockey without the protective pants because they skate faster without them.
**Believe it or not, the only injury worse than a bruise happened in baseball before the game even started.
Stormi,
The level of risk involved depends on a lot of things.Different sports have different levels of risk, and even within the same sport,things such as league rules, how competitive the program and/or coach is ,and player skills make a difference in the risk.
Rules that can make a difference include
1)how the divisions are determined (can be by age,size,skill or a combination)
2}different rules for different divisions- for example, in my son’s hockey league, the youngest division (6-9 yr olds) are not allowed to check. In his baseball league, the divisions with kids under 9 had adults pitch to them.
3}Rules regarding protective equipment.
Player skills matter because some injuries can be avoided by predicting what will happen next. For example, in baseball, most of the kids I’ve seen who get hit with a thrown ball weren’t expecting the ball to be thrown to them.In hockey, the better players can’t avoid being checked, but they can often either keep their balance or control how they fall and avoid injury.
There are a lot of benefits to youth sports (assuming that they are run properly- a book called Why Johnny Hates Sports can give ideas of what to look for) such as exercise, discipline and most important to me , learning to work as a team and put the team first ( for example passing the puck to someone who’s in a better position to score, rather than trying to score yourself).
Football is a special case, in two ways. First, it is the most injury-prone team sport, simply because of what the rules allow. Second, in some places, high school football is practically a religion. Everyone in town goes to the game on Friday night, everyone knows the players, and the coach had better have a winning season if he doesn’t want to risk his job. Those conditions encourage playing even with injuries and using dangerous tactics because winning is so important. I’d be willing to bet that a disproportionate number of serious injuries come from areas where football is king. In fact, if Stormi knows of 5 serious injuries in the past two weeks in her state alone, I’d bet she lives in one of those areas.
I gotta go with Orca here. I spent two years in the Navy, which counts as sports. I now have two messed-up knees, a bad hip, a useless ankle and possible kidney damage from overzealous company commanders and inadequate medical facilities. I spent the two years living on painkillers and causing further damage to my kidneys and joints. I am now facing knee surgery.
Sadly, my case is not unique. I can’t tell you how many times the “it’s no big deal” attitude costs someone the use of a joint, or an organ, or a brain. (No joke. A friend of mine fell, hit his head, and went unconscious. No one knew how serious the problem was until he developed seizures.)
Granted, not everything is completely safe. There are, and will be, injuries. However, there are such things as protective gear, appropriate footwear, and adequate supervision and training. Without these, there WILL be more, and more serious, injury.
Football gets the bad rep, and has the most traumatic injuries, but each sport has theirs. Soccer has mroe knee injuries than football - soccer tackles aren’t as violent, but they are at knee level, and frequently the sliding player pins the foot whiel hitting the knee. Football tackles are higher, and I’ll take the broken bone over a ligament tear. Soccer is also under study of decreased intelligence for players who repetitively head the ball (cumulative microconcussions), although not all positions head the ball as much. Basketball seems much harder on women’s knees than mens’ (ACL, MCL, angle of the knee due to wider hips is suspected). Each sport has their dangers.
Sporty Kitty -
No offense. But “only” 5 is 5 too many!
Yes, it is rare, but it still happens.
Think I am the only parent to worry about this?
How many kids do you think quit the football team after the last incident? SEVEN ! - they don’t even know if their teammate is going to live yet or not. That is scary to them, it is scary to the parents.
Granted , it is rare, but damnit, it is scary. These are boys who have so much ahead of them.
You will understand more where I am coming from when you have children of your own.
Just going to add my $0.02. I don’t know anybody who’s played sports who’s managed to go unhurt in some way. I know that doesn’t make you feel better, but it’s part of it. I played and still play soccer, hockey and tennis. I’ve received injuries from all of them, although none have been really serious. In my experience, though, a lot of serious injuries can be avoided with the proper equipment. In hockey, for example, a lot of head injuries are caused by helmets that don’t fit correctly. A lot of the football injuries I’ve seen were caused by the same types of things. I’m not saying that if you have great equipment, you won’t get hurt, but you can help your kids out a lot by making sure they know how to put on their gear properly.
But, I believe that the positive things you get from playing sports far outweighs the dangers. I learned how to associate with people, how to be a good sport/live with disapointment, and teamwork. Activities that require your kids to cooperate with each other are invaluable in life.
I don’t have the statistics at hand to back me up, but I have a hunch that travelling to and from practice incurs a far greater risk of death or paralyzing injury than does the sport itself.
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