Time to support education instead of sports
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Basking
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Posted 7:09 pm, 03/31/2015
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It's time to take a serious look at high school sports programs. The question of if sports are worth the expense, or if that money should be put into education has been discussed a lot. But, a more serious issue that should be looked at is the health risks that athletes face. In the last year, five NFL players have retired early due to the risk of concussions. These professionals decided that being able to spend coherent time with their families was worth more than millions of dollars.
With more and more data coming every day, it has become clear that brain injuries aren't a trivial risk. They are almost a certainty at some point in an athlete's career. And what was once thought to only be a football problem has been found to be a threat to most sports, football only being the worst.
One school district found their female athletes had more brain injuries than their football players. CDC studies estimate 1 in 30 female athletes suffer brain injuries.
http://www.nbcwashington.co...6661.html#
Wake Forest research found that even without suffering from concussions, high school football players showed changes to the brain. http://www.foxnews.com/heal...n-changes/
In the last few years there have been multiple cases of pro athletes that made headlines for murder and suicides, where it came out they had suffered multiple brain injuries. It's no question that their actions were connected to their injuries. But, how many similar cases where the athlete didn't make it to the professional level are unnoticed or are never connected to their sports career? How many high school and college athletes were dumped back on the streets after their schools where done with them, and never even checked for brain injuries?
Some numbers suggest that the rate of brain injuries are higher at the high school level than at the college level. But more go undiagnosed. Think about that on a Friday night watching the game.
Teach your child to get ahead by focusing on education, not by trying to do it on the field.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...MC2140075/
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