"What we think is probably happening is that since these kids don't have any symptoms, nobody ever takes them out of the game or makes them sit. They probably keep racking up more and more hits and it tends to affect more and more of the brain."
Nauman and his colleagues are looking for funding so they can study soccer players, wrestlers and participants in activities that aren't usually thought of as dangerous. "Anecdotally, the cheerleaders at Purdue had almost as many concussions as the football players," Nauman says.
Mark Graham
Natasha Helmick's athletic career effectively ended in the Lake Highlands Girls Classic League.
Chuck Kajer
Head injuries derailed Kayla Meyer's hockey career -- and her health.
Related Content
More About
"No bill is better than a bad bill," says Florida state Senator Dennis Jones, a working chiropractor who, in May, helped to kill a state concussion law. "As chiropractors, we've been treating head injuries since 1931. The symptoms of a concussion are not that difficult to diagnose."
Florida is one of the only states to balk at concussion legislation for youth athletes, a nationwide trend that started in 2009 in Washington. A prototype for dozens to come, the act requires any athlete under 18 who suffers a suspected concussion to receive written consent from a medical professional before returning to play. (There is no similar federal law.)
In Texas, Natasha's Law, named after Natasha Helmick, was signed by Governor Rick Perry in June after the Senate passed the bill by a 31-0 margin. And, beginning on January 1, 2012, Colorado's Jake Snakenberg Act will require every coach in youth athletics to complete an online concussion recognition course.
Florida, however, recoiled from its own version of concussion safety because Jones was miffed that the language did not include chiropractors among "medical professionals."
As more and more states enact concussion laws, medical professionals, athletic trainers and school administrators are wondering if these laws are actually going to help prevent a condition that's inherently difficult to detect.
"I think the law comes up a little short," says Saint Louis University head athletic trainer Anthony Breitbach about Missouri's Interscholastic Youth Sports Brain Injury Prevention Act, "because a lot of these symptoms are subtle and can be easily concealed by the athlete if he or she wants to play." Additionally, Breitbach estimates that since only half of the state's schools can afford to employ an athletic trainer (which echoes a nationwide trend), a lot of concussions will continue to go undiagnosed, even with the new law in place.
In Arizona, on the strength of Governor Jan Brewer's signature on House Bill 1521, the Mayo Clinic is offering free, online-based concussion tests to more than 100,000 high school athletes. In June, the Mayo Clinic issued a press release stating that the Arizona Interscholastic Association had endorsed the baseline test, which was not true and caused an AIA attorney to threaten legal action. The two have since made up and are partnering to test all Arizona contact athletes during the 2011-2012 school year starting with football.
Steve Hogen, athletic director of Mesa Public Schools, had concerns with Arizona's law even before it passed. If he and his cohorts hadn't been vocal about the bill's language (which was consequently amended), he says, the law would have placed an impossible load on them.
"It put the burden on us that we had to make sure that all Pop Warner football kids were tested. That's impossible. We can't do that," Hogen says. "What if an out-of-state group had come in and they didn't have this concussion testing? We wouldn't have had the resources to check."
Because a legal precedent has yet to be established on these new laws, attorneys are divided on how potential lawsuits will play out in a courtroom. Steven Pachman is a Philadelphia-based lawyer who has advised numerous academic institutions and athletic entities about concussion litigation. He defended La Salle University in a lawsuit filed by the family of a former player, Preston Plevretes, who claimed that he'd received severe brain damage because the school's nurse and a team trainer inserted him back into play too soon following a concussion. (La Salle settled out of court for $7.5 million.)
Pachman explains that he receives a call each week from advice-seeking youth and high school sports organizations, and "what I'm hearing from the defense perspective — 'We don't have a plan' and 'An athletic trainer is too expensive' — frightens me," Pachman says.
"The youth sports might suffer the most because of their lack of resources. ... A town of 80 people, like the one from Hoosiers, may not even think about potential litigation until something tragic happens," Pachman says.
Before she became an old woman at age 14, Kayla Meyer had three passions. She rode horses on her family's farm. She was a huge reader. "Supernatural monsters kind of thing," explains the gregarious Minnesotan when asked what books she likes, "or old kind of sword-fighting stuff is basically what I read."
And, like seemingly every other man, woman and child in the iced-over town of New Prague, 45 miles south of Minneapolis, Kayla played hockey.
In early 2009, then age 13, she was skating in a club game when a collision took her legs out from under her and she fell, hitting the back of her head. Kayla told the coach she was fine and played the rest of the game.
