Kick off is about to begin, the crowd is roaring, spirit fingers going. But wait, this is too dangerous; someone could get a concussion and suffer long term neurological damage. Stop the game, let’s rethink this….

Imagine a football game without kick off or punt returns, image a soccer game without heading the ball, imagine basketball without tip off. Iconic features of many sporting events could very well be considered dangerous. Some are calling for the abolishment of these features in high school sports to keep the games safer for young

athletes.

While it has been proven that some aspects of sports can cause severe head injuries and high temperatures can cause heat stroke that have lasting effects on athletes, extreme prevention at the high school level is unnecessary and would negatively impact the popularity of high school sports.

Issues with intense injuries occurring at professional or college level sports cannot be compared to those that occur at the high school level because high schoolers do not often play to the caliber of higher level athletes.

Despite discouraging some methods of injury prevention, there is no suggestion here of allowing high schoolers go into sporting events to get trampled and beaten up by their opponents.

Fenton has done an adequate job of providing safety for athletes. Concussions are taken very seriously. Student athletes with concussions are required to undergo physical conditioning with Mitch Smelis, the athletic trainer, during the entire time of being concussed and cannot resume participation in practice without a doctor’s note.

Every sporting event is required to have enough water for all participants at the site of the event. Heat index is taken into account with specific requirements of prevention such as removal of unnecessary parts of uniforms, scheduled breaks and even cancelation of games and practices with high temperatures.

Any further prevention of concussions or heat stroke would alter the play of the game to the point of making playing the sport dull.