Concussions and Your Child: What You Need to Know
Simply put, soccer is a contact sport. While most contact is fairly light in youth levels of competition, the players are all after one thing; the ball. This means there will inevitably be inadvertent collisions, and sometimes heads will crash together or hit the ground.
Concussion awareness and management is an issue on the rise, and one in which all soccer parents should be well educated and prepared. Concussions are a serious injury that can have have lifelong repercussions if improperly managed. They are particularly dangerous because the symptoms can be difficult to detect, and even when detected can seem like a minor issue.
US Youth Soccer provides documents which offer a detailed overview as well as protocols for parents and coaches to function as a team to ensure that youth concussions are properly managed.
I am curious as to what the leading cause of concussions is in soccer. Back in high school when I played football I know for a fact it was head to head contact but I feel like it could be different with soccer. In my opinion it is probably more likely to occur with head to ground contact. I've had 1 concussion in my life and I couldn't think straight for multiple days.
ReplyDeleteRyan,
DeleteYou are correct; head to ground is the most common type of concussion we see in youth soccer. Head to head is still fairly prevalent, but nowhere near as common as head to ground. Problem is, the younger kids tend to step on the ball and lose their balance, falling on their heads.