Three books for sports parenting mavens

Now where was I...Seriously, I've spent the last month working (furiously) on several projects. I'm up for air now.

I'm calling attention to several recent books written by friends/colleagues. These would be excellent additions to the nightstand.

Elevating Your Game: Becoming a Triple-Impact Competitor. Jim Thompson, the author, is founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance and a fervent believer in coach and parent education. Jim was interviewed about the book and kids sports last month in the New York Times.

Daddy's Little Goalie. Robert Strauss has written tenderly and humorously about the joy he has taken in his daughter's sports life. It's an exploration of the brighter side of youth sports. People who hang around this blog will enjoy the change of pace.

Parent Your Best. Jeremy Boone is a strength and conditioning trainer in Charlotte. Even though he's stronger than me, we share many of the same views about over-training, over-specialization and other "overs" spoiling youth sports. Some fitness types nudge kids into starting earlier and training harder than they should, perhaps because it's in their economic interest to do so. That's not Jeremy and I respect him for it.

Speaking about kids and sports tonight in Darien

Tonight, I will be in Darien, Connecticut to speak about Until It Hurts at an event co-hosted by the Darien Library and YWCA Parent Awareness Network.

I'm especially looking forward to this one, as I have a previous connection to youth sports in Darien. In 2010, I wrote a piece for the New York Times about Peter Barston, an inquisitive 15-year-old and former rec league second baseman who wondered: Why do kids play sports in Darien? To get the answers, Peter launched a survey of hundreds of kids in town and came up with interesting results.

The number one reason kids in Darien play sports?

Not winning.
Not college scholarships.
According to Peter's research.....

Hope to see you there.

New cause of concussions in youth sports, Madden?

I never thought I could laugh at a story about kids' sports and head trauma. I changed my mind. The Onion reports on a growing health crisis - "long-term neurological consequences" from playing Madden football.

"The situation is far more serious than we had previously thought," said Vincent Wu, head of neuropathology at the IBIR. "Playing Madden football increases one's risk for a wide range of cognitive impairments, from difficulty focusing, to a decreased awareness of one's surroundings, to a generalized inability to engage with society at large.

"Playing so many simulated seasons takes a devastating toll," Wu added. "The human brain was never meant to withstand the brutal impacts of this game."

Clever. And a takeoff on a real news story published in the New York Times on Sunday. It revealed that the next generation of the Madden game - Madden 12 - "will be realistic enough not only to show players receiving concussions, but also to show any player who sustains one being sidelined for the rest of the game — no exceptions. Beyond that, in the background, the game’s announcers will explain that the player was removed because of the seriousness of head injuries."

So the trick is to play enough Madden to absorb the message without playing so much that you hurt yourself.

Remind me again, why shouldn't girls play baseball?

About two years ago, I wrote an article for the New York Times about high school baseball and the girls (surmounting senseless obstacles) who enjoyed playing it. After writing the story, I made contact with Justine Siegal.

Then, Justine was an advocate for girls' baseball who was having modest success getting her message out. Now she is a media sensation and a person who is truly changing public attitudes.

The last few days, Justine has reached millions of people with her "Baseball for All" mantra. She had the brilliant idea to approach her hometown team, the Cleveland Indians, with a request to throw batting practice for the squad during a spring training workout in Arizona. A woman had never pitched BP to a major-league team.

Justine was on the mound yesterday, making history. The New York Times was there, and ran a piece today.

And MLB.com was there with its cameras.

Congratulations Justine. Remind me again, why do we discourage girls from playing baseball?

Kids, sports and injuries, according to sources

We try to keep this a (mostly) commercial-free zone. Today is an exception. The New York Times is offering a series of on-line sessions on the topic of sports, kids and injuries. The class meets weekly starting in late February and the instructors are first-rate, Times reporters Gretchen Reynolds and Alan Schwarz.

The cost is $135. I hear it's an easy A.

On youth football and protecting kids' heads

Last Sunday, The New York Times ran another great piece on head trauma in youth football. This time the subject was prevention. Alan Schwarz visited an unusual coach, Bobby Hosea, who teaches kids to tackle properly and safely -not leading with their heads.

Hosea is quoted in the piece: “When a kid gets paralyzed or dies, it’s not an accident — the injuries happen because people never teach kids how to tackle the right way. Everyone’s talking about head injury awareness, awareness, awareness. What are you going to do about it? It drives me absolutely crazy. It’s time for this to stop!”

I've been in head-trauma mode these past few days, reading about cause and effect. I picked up a terrific book, Head Games by Chris Nowinski. It's the story of Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and pro wrestler, unraveling the mystery of his own brain injuries. And in the process, triggering a national conversation.

I spoke recently with Dr. Robert Cantu, the neurosurgeon who diagnosed Nowinski and is now leading the debate about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an Alzheimer’s-like brain disease associated with repetitive head trauma. Cantu and Nowinski established the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston. Its mission is to raise awareness. It's succeeding.

Watch this. If you're a parent of a youth athlete, watch twice.

Youth sports poll: Concussions don't worry kids

The latest ESPN the Magazine includes an interesting survey. The Mag polled 600 people (300 players, 100 coaches, 100 parents, 100 athletic trainers) in 23 state about concussions. I like the questions, simple and neutral. Not much to like about the attitudes of players, though. A majority seems not to take concussions that seriously. Have a look at the question below. (Click on it for easier reading). More than half say they'd rather win a big game with a teammate suffering a concussion than lose without him.

The quick and easy way to interpret these findings is that the attitudes of players are the largest problem. Maybe. I'd say it's more complicated. Kids are sponges. They listen not only to what we say but what we do. They are influenced by education campaigns that warn of dangers from concussions. They also understand that as a society we value tough guys.

This is from Until It Hurts:

"Are adults sending messages, subtly or otherwise, that winning comes first and guarding the health of high school players second? Do youth players fear that they have to choose between listening to their bodies and satisfying their coaches and parents?

"In his New York Times piece, [Alan] Schwarz addresses these questions with powerful reporting. A physician at a Connecticut high school recalls sending a player from an opposing team to the sidelines with a concussion. The coach instructed the player to switch his uniform number and surreptitiously return to the game. A team doctor in Charlottesville, Virginia laments the recklessness of parents who will not listen to any advice that takes their child out of a game. “I have had parents tear up the form that I’ve filled out strongly recommending their child not play, and shop a doc to get their kid OK’d,” he says.

Bob Feller and the dad who built a batting cage

The death of Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller yesterday is a sad occasion. Feller was the dominant pitcher of his day and a child prodigy. In his big-league debut, while on summer vacation from high school, he struck out 15 batters.

Today's obituary in the New York Times is a good read and reminds me that the present generation of parents is far from the first with big sports dreams for kids.

Check this, and the Feller interview below.

"Robert William Feller was born on Nov. 3, 1918, in Van Meter — population 300 — and grew up nearby on a farm where his father, Bill, devoted himself to hogs, wheat and corn, but most of all to raising a ballplayer.

"Bill Feller and his son listened to live broadcasts of Cubs games from Chicago and to re-creations on WHO Radio in Des Moines by a fledgling sportscaster named Ronald Reagan.

"The father played catch with his son, bought him a Rogers Hornsby model glove and a flannel baseball uniform, and built a batting cage. When Bob was 12, his father leveled pasture land to create a ballpark, complete with bleachers and scoreboard, and formed a team to showcase Bob against players in their late teens and 20s.

“My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent,” Feller told Donald Honig in his 1975 oral history, “Baseball When the Grass Was Real.” “I don’t think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.”

My take on sports training for babies and toddlers

Wednesday's New York Times ran my article on DVDs and group classes that introduce babies and toddlers to sports. A lot of reaction - pro and con - on the Times Web site. Last time I looked, 105 comments.

Each company cited in the article - and the entrepreneurs behind them - seems to be coming from a slightly different perspective. Doreen Bolhuis, who created the Gymtrix exercise videos, believes that babies truly can improve coordination by working out. She's quoted in the article on this point and during my interview with her spoke about it at length, telling me, “We sell babies short because they can’t speak yet. But they’re all about learning how their bodies work and about movement patterns. When we guide them they learn so much more quickly than if we leave it to chance and hope they’ll figure it out."

Other company executives quoted in the story cited different reasons for getting really, really young ones started in sports - fighting childhood obesity, getting them in the habit of being active and teaching the basics of games they may pick up later.

How many parents are buying videos and signing up for classes hoping to turn their babies and toddlers into superstars later on is impossible to say. Clearly some companies are appealing to that instinct, subtly or otherwise.

I had a small role in putting together this video which ran with the article on the Times site. It's worth a look.

Kids' concussions and Lou Gehrig's Disease

I meant to comment on this a few months back - but didn't. Lou Gehrig lives on as a sports icon in part because of his legendary tolerance for pain; he refused to leave games despite injuries that would have sidelined others for weeks.

Now researchers are asking whether Gehrig's refusal to acknowledge injury - and not Lou Gehrig's Disease - might have contributed to his death.

Youth football coaches, take note.

Is football too violent for kids? If it is, then what?

The scrutiny over youth sports concussion seems to get more intense by the day. Last week the New York Times ran four articles - pieces on concussions in youth basketball (we also blogged on this), a suspected link between the suicide of a college football player and years of head trauma, a NFL middle linebacker who was permitted to wobble back into a game despite having taken a major blow to the noggin and renewed speculation that head trauma occurs routinely (and is under-diagnosed routinely) in youth sports.

Over the weekend the Philadelphia Inquirer's deputy editorial page editor asked whether football is just too darn dangerous for kids.

Youth football organizations need to be taking the lead in sharing accurate information and encouraging frank discussion of this issue. On my last visit to the Pop Warner Web site, I couldn't find either. The lead articles were "Enter the 2010 Pop Warner Photo Contest" and "Vote for Pop Warner National Championships."

This is not Pop Warner's responsibility alone. But as the largest organized kids' football league in the country, it should be speaking loudly about this issue. And speaking out in every possible forum, including its Web site. So should countless other youth football leagues around the country.

Meanwhile, I recommend Stop Sports Injuries as an excellent source of information about concussions and many other common injuries in youth sports.

Is football too violent for kids? And if it is, then what?

Concussions up for basketball players - but why?

A just-released study points to a a major rise in the number of kids suffering serious head injuries while playing basketball.

According to the study published today in the Journal Pediatrics, kid players 5 to 19 treated in hospital emergency departments for basketball-related traumatic brain injuries rose 70 per cent from 1997 to 2007.

Assuming this is right, why would that be? I got a call from a reporter Friday (the study was embargoed until today) wanting to discuss that and hear any theories I might have.

My first thought - shared by many, probably - is that heightened awareness about concussions is a large factor. There's been so much publicity about the unseen harms of concussions, not just lately but going back to the mid 2000s. I highly recommend this piece from 2007 written by Alan Schwarz of the New York Times. It's remarkable in showing how little attention coaches, parents and players were paying to head injuries.

A second theory. Were substantially more kids playing basketball in 2007 than in 1997? I haven't been able to answer that, not directly. As close as I've been able to come is to establish that there were many more kids playing high school sports at the end of that 10-year span than the start. Total participation for all high school sports grew from 6.3 million in 1997-98 to 7.4 million in 2007-2008.

Here are things I believe are NOT responsible: Kids are getting bigger and faster (not that much bigger and faster); referees are allowing more physical play (zero evidence supporting that); sportsmanship is in steep decline so more elbows are flying (even more far-fetched).

This isn't the first study to point out how ignorant we all were about head injuries in youth sports. Doubtful it will be the last

Relive your kid's no-hitter again, again (and again)

I wrote this for today's New York Times. It's a look at how technology is changing youth sports. The biggest change: We can now follow our kids' sports lives on laptops and Smartphones.

The article looks at two emerging companies melding high tech and youth sports. Youth Sports Live sets up and maintains Web cams at neighborhood baseball and softball fields. Games can be viewed on demand at the company's Web site. (The monthly fee is $14.95). Want to relive the thrill of your kid's first home run again and again (and again). Youth Sports Live will sell you a DVD for $19.95.

The other company is Fungo Media. Ted Sullivan, its founder is a former minor-league baseball player and Harvard MBA who's pitching an iPhone app that functions as a virtual scorecard for kids' baseball and softball. It's called GameChanger. Pay $10 for the season and GameChanger sends pitch-by-pitch updates to your handheld gadget.

I wasn't able to work in all the details. One thing I left out was a description of all the stats that GameChanger collects and can serve up - like the number of first-pitch strikes your 11-year-old is tossing, how often the leadoff tyke swings at the first pitch, on and on. For a Little League game.

This is cool. But does it heap more pressure on kid athletes and give them new reasons to head for the exits? That's what the piece is really about.

The whys - and why nots - of ACL reconstruction

Interesting and important piece last week on the New York Times "Phys Ed" blog on ACL injuries and whether the most aggressive treatment (surgery) is always best. Research just published in the New England Journal of Medicine raises real doubts. Patients who had ACL reconstruction- an expensive and relatively complicated operation - were followed in a study by researchers from the University of Sweden along with a second group that opted to forgo surgery and be treated with physical therapy only.

Surprising outcome. The Times reports, that “more than half the A.C.L. reconstructions” currently being conducted on injured knees “could be avoided without adversely affecting outcomes.”

The article continues, "Part of the reason for A.C.L. surgery’s popularity is that by most measures, it works. In the current study, most of the group members who had reconstructive surgery reported that their injured knees felt healthy after two years and that they had returned to activity — not, in most cases, at the same level as before their injuries, but they were active. Significantly, their knees also were notably more “stable” than the joints that hadn’t been surgically fixed. Stability is, in theory, desirable. A stable knee rarely gives way.

The article, though, goes on to explain that sports docs and researchers are split on the importance of a 'stable" knee. There seems to be agreement that it's very important for athletes in pivot, cut, change direction sports like basketball and lacrosse. In straight-ahead activities like running and biking, it appears to be less important. (There's even disagreement about that, though.)

I say the decision to have surgery on a damaged ACL is more complicated. A few years ago, I wrote an article about a spike in Tommy John surgeries being performed on high school pitchers. I interviewed James Andrews and Lewis Yocum, two prominent sports orthopedists, about the increase in the number of such patients showing up in their operating rooms. Yocum expressed his concern that sometimes he was operating on kids with limited futures in baseball. Maybe a year or two more of high school ball and that was it.

"Just because we have a hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail. Obviously, the surgery isn't designed for everybody," Yocum said.

The parallel carries only so far. And every kid deserves the best knee that modern medicine can provide. But everything isn't a nail.

Hat tip to my pal Ed Wiest.

When the adults chase refs to the locker room

What's the worst thing you've ever seen happen to a ref or umpire at a youth sports game?

I heard some doozeys recently while working on this article for the New York Times.

A football official in Oregon told me about being chased from the field to the locker room after a game, then having adults pounding on the door trying to get in.

A basketball ref, also in Oregon, recalled being doused with a large cup of soda.

A basketball official in Ohio remembered working a rec league game last season in which the parents on the losing side took umbrage at a couple of close calls. A disturbing chant began building on their side of the court: Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech.

The consequence of all this is that lots of qualified officials are heading for the exits. As the story explains, shortages of umps and refs in volleyball, football, soccer, among others, have cropped up in many parts of the country. In multiple surveys, when officials are asked why they're quitting, they cite fans and coaches who give them a rough time. Too much of a hassle, they say, for 40 bucks or whatever the going rate might be.

When people talk about the damage that's done when adults get out of hand at kids' sports games, this isn't the first thing that comes to mind. But ask the folks who're searching for officials. It's a problem.

New York Times weighs in on overuse injuries

Jane Brody wrote about overuse injuries in youth sports in Tuesday's "Personal Health" column in the New York Times. The headline: For Children in Sports, a Breaking Point. I was glad to see it for a couple of reasons.

First, it brought attention to an issue that doesn't get very much - or as much as it deserves. Despite forums like this one and the efforts of many sports medicine experts, overuse injuries (totally avoidable if a few basics rules are observed) remain an under-reported issue. Among parents and coaches (my observation), there just isn't a sense of urgency about the problem.

Second, Brody cited Until It Hurts. In the column, she devotes several paragraphs to my brain-lock moment as a youth baseball coach (when I paid scant attention to my son's complaints of a sore shoulder). On that score, she refers to my "misguided behavior" and "foolish shortsightedness." She got it right both times.

The column reached a lot of readers. Wednesday morning, it ranked among the ten most e mailed articles in the newspaper.

I like Brody's long view of the problem:

"Clearly we’ve gone too far when the emphasis on athletic participation and performance becomes all-consuming and causes injuries that can sometimes compromise a child’s future."

Will youth leagues sign up for Sandlot Day?

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for the New York Times about a concept called Sandlot Day.

It's a new idea - sort of. Developed by the SUNY Youth Sports Institute at Cortland, the grand plan is for youth leagues to designate one day during their seasons when adults cede control to the kid players. They make decisions about the important stuff - who plays on which team, lineups, batting orders, whether stealing is allowed, if three strikes really means you're out. (Or get back in there and keep swinging).

As the article states, institute director Tim Donovan hopes to cajole about two dozen baseball leagues around New York State to test out Sandlot Day this season. It'll be interesting to see whether he reaches the goal. For the moment, the effort is limited to baseball, though it certainly could work for other sports.

I just noticed that the Pittsford Little League near Rochester, also cited in the article, has penciled in a Sandlot Day on June 20. I'll be looking for others.

Wedding bells for Olympic gymnast, Kerri Strug

Former gold medal gymnast Kerri Strug just got married. Nice story in Sunday's New York Times.

She's 32 and a project manager for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in Washington. Her new husband, Robert William Fischer III, is a lawyer in the Washington Congressional office of Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas.

The couple met two years ago through a mutual friend.

The article tells of the couple's courtship. It also touches on the tough choices - uneven bars, yes; boys, no - that Strug made to become a champion.

From the Times:

Ms. Strug, who acknowledged “not dating much and living a sheltered life” during her gymnastics career, said that she felt an immediate connection with Mr. Fischer.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I was very attracted to him,” she remembered. “My entire adolescence was geared toward one thing: gymnastics. It’s like I was living in this big gymnastics bubble. I never went to my high school dance, and didn’t date much, so my criteria for dating men was really just put together in theory, not practice.”

Why do kids play sports? In Darien, fun is first

Here's a piece that I wrote for Sunday's New York Times about Peter Barston, an enterprising young man from Darien, Connecticut. Since August, Peter, 15, has been touring local youth leagues asking the kid players: Why do you play sports?

Peter's survey is a single sheet with 11 reasons listed including: to have fun, to make friends, to earn a college scholarship, to go to a higher level of competition. The answer cited the most? To have fun. It was the top answer for kids in every grade (fourth to eighth), for boys and girls, for players in basketball and football.

One thing that I wasn't able to work into the article was the reaction of the youth players in Darien to Barston's project. Peter told me, "A lot of kids said: Thank you, it's good to be asked."

Peter says he's thinking about launching a Web site where he would post results collected so far (for football and basketball) and those still in the pipeline (softball, baseball and lacrosse). And, he hopes to inspire other kids to do similar surveys in their hometowns.

How a pinstripe changed cross-country history

This story just posted to the New York Times Web site, and [this just in] appeared in the newspaper December 13.

I got interested in this after reading in the Baltimore Sun about a weird ending to a high school cross-country meet here in Maryland. The runner who'd finished fourth (out of 120 in the meet) was disqualified 15 minutes or so after the race. In turn, his team, which had been the apparent winner, dropped to third place.

The trangression of the runner, a nice young man named John Riemer? The compression shorts he had worn under his running pants were adorned with a thin white pinstripe. (Click on the image for a better view of the nonconforming shorts. John is wearing number 23). That violated a new and somewhat obscure high school rule that prohibits undershorts with "contrasting" stitching. I spent a morning at Hereford High School interviewing John and the Hereford cross-country coach, Jason Bowman.

It turns out that wardrobe malfunctions of this type crop up a few times each year.