Youth football coaches get injury lesson

September 13, 2007 - By Derek Strum

When it comes to football, some injuries can't be prevented.

But when they do occur, reacting to the injury and having it properly diagnosed is of the utmost importance.

That was one of the messages two area doctors told a group of a dozen youth football coaches, mostly from the Hinsdale Falcons program, during a nearly two-hour seminar Sept. 5 at Hinsdale Central.

Preston Wolin, director of the Sports Medicine Program and orthopedic surgeon at the Neurologic and Orthopedic Institute of Chicago, noted that about 1.5 million athletes, ages 9 and older, play football and an estimated 1.2 million injuries occur every year when they participate.

"An injury doesn't necessarily mean it's a devastating injury, doesn't mean that they had to have surgery, it just means that it was recorded by somebody and they missed time from either practice or a game," Wolin said. "And these are using all the available databases that we have. But youth football doesn't have that same kind of database nationally. There's really very little that's known about it."

Many of the coaches on hand leaned in to get a better look at an X-ray during a portion Wolin discussed pre-adolescent injuries and types of epiphyseal plate injuries.

"Muscular skeletal injuries (can) manifest themselves, or appear similar to injuries that occur in older athletes, but they're completely different injuries," the other featured speaker, Dean Karahalios, neurosurgeon with the Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, noted afterward.

"(Wolin) made the point that in an older athlete, a certain assessment you would make on the sideline would lead you to believe that there was a ligamentus injury. And if you did the same assessment, you'd find the same thing in a young athlete, but in that particular case it is more likely to be a bony injury than a soft tissue or ligamentus injury. And that's something that goes unrecognized all the time."

Karahalios, a 1982 Hinsdale Central graduate, focused primarily on concussions and spinal injuries. While the two are less frequent than skeletal injuries, Karahalios added that there needed to be a better job done in identifying significant head injuries because the signs "can sometimes be subtle."

"It's important to recognize it because if they are injured once again and they have not fully recovered from their initial concussion, they can develop problems down the road," Karahalios said.

The seminar also included discussion about techniques for tackling and blocking as well as proper equipment.

"Probably the biggest preventative measure in head and neck injuries is proper blocking and tackling," Wolin said.

To illustrate his point, Wolin showed a picture of Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher tackling an Arizona Cardinals player.

"It's really difficult when they see a player like this on TV," Wolin said. "You especially don't want to see your kid trying to imitate the 'battering ram,' when a player's down and coming on top of him."

Wolin noted that the "cowboy collar" shoulder pad has been shown to decrease problems with "stingers" in athletes and should be encouraged by comparison to the "neck roll," which has "too much give."

"This is stuff you guys know, but parents don't know and kids certainly don't know," Wolin said.

Preventive knee braces are not designed or advertised to protect athletes from ACL injuries and fractures, but are more about the grade of MCL injuries, Wolin said. And despite the numerous types of braces, Wolin said they're "all the same thing."

"Sometimes kids think that those braces are going to entitle them to things they couldn't do otherwise," Wolin said. "And parents are shocked ... they're shocked (when they) have come in my office, 'My kid was wearing a brace,' and yet they get hurt."

Wolin's presentation concluded with the reminders that many injuries can be "devastating" when not treated properly and "the clearance note is only as good as the physician writing it."

The coaches in attendance appreciated the information.

"I think it's something that's very valuable as a football coach," said David Marco, a coach for the Hinsdale Falcons 100-pound Gold football team. "We should all be interested in making the sport as safe as it possibly can be. There's obviously an inherent risk, and the more we are capable of lowering that risk, the better it is for everybody."