ANTHONY GETTINO
Special to The Leader
While this edition of “The Leader” may have a good amount of silly articles and things that are light hearted in the name of Halloween, concussions in sports are a very serious matter.
Many good people have lost the ability to think clearly and have ultimately ended their lives because of the damage that concussions have done to their brains.
A very large sum of concussions come from boxing, ice hockey and football. In football and in boxing, there is severe trauma being done every play and punch to the player’s brains because of the nature of each sport.
Boxing is literally a sport where the competitors are paid to inflict damage on their opponents and try to knock them out.
As for football, the defense is trying to hit the player with the ball, and take them down. Each time they collide, there is a wave of force that causes movement of the brain, even if wearing a helmet.
In ice hockey, it gets violent. People hit others into the boards, into the ground, and sometimes there are even fights. The helmets are also not as protective as the ones that football players wear.
When these players get hit, they sometimes hit their heads and cause concussions.
A single concussion is not the end of the world. It is when the concussions start to add up that there becomes a cause for concern. Multiple concussions can lead to a condition known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
CTE is a degenerative brain disease that affects a person’s moods and behaviors. Symptoms do not generally show up for years after the person has the multitude of concussions.
The person may become more aggressive in nature and begin to seem like a totally different person than who you knew.
After these mood changes, there may begin to be problems with thinking and memory.
A neuropathologist named Dr. Ann McKee examined the brains of 111 deceased NFL players. Out of the 111 that she examined, all but one had developed CTE. It ranged from linemen to running backs and even a punter.
Not all of these players had concussions reported. What this study found was that it isn’t necessary for a concussion to cause CTE. What was found, instead, was that the amount of blows to the head were what caused CTE.
The amount of football players that have been found to have CTE makes many parents worried about letting their children play football, along with other heavy contact sports. While schools do have a limit on the amount of reported concussions a student athlete can have before not being allowed to play school sponsored sports, it may not be enough.
Most high schools stop athletes when they reach three concussions. The problem parents have with this is how many hits to the head have their kids had between each concussion?
A large dilemma is brewing about how to handle CTE in heavy contact sports. If sports like football don’t adapt soon, they could soon become a sport of the past.