Orig Post thestarpress.com | Re-Post So-Mark 9/9/15
YORKTOWN – Yorktown Middle School students are increasing their safety and health by playing a series of games.
By remembering words, phrases and patterns, the students are establishing a baseline for impact testing, a series of tests to determine if they could have suffered a head injury, most commonly a concussion from their sport.
“I equate it to the students by explaining that we all have a set weight. On this date we weigh this, but if there is an injury we might weigh differently when tested later,” Erick Braun said.
Braun, the Dean of Students and Athletic Director for the middle school, has been helping move all of the school’s athletes through the examinations.
Yorktown Middle School has been working in unison with the Dave Duerson Athletic Safety Fund in order to bring the testing, which is then kept as a record for the student athlete in case it were ever needed.
The Dave Duerson Athletic Safety Fund, in honor of former Bears player and local legend Dave Duerson, has helped nearly 4,300 students in the Muncie Community School system and more than 6,300 students in the Delaware Community School System.
The Duerson Fund has helped bring testing to several schools in the area and has actively pushed to help educate coaches and athletes in all Delaware County Schools.
“Yorktown was very switched on to what we wanted to do with them, and we appreciate that very much,” said Mike Duerson, the head of the fund and brother of the late Dave Duerson.
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Concussions are a serious problem for athletes.
“We’ve just never had the resources to bring this testing to our middle school athletes before,” Principal Heath Dudley said.
It’s not just the major sports like football that can be affected by concussion injuries, a fact that the foundation and the school wants to stress.
Yorktown Middle School’s cheerleaders went through the process as well.
A study done by the American Journal of Sports Medicine showed that cheerleading accounted for nearly five percent of reported concussions. The likely unreported injuries mean rates can go even higher.
“Middle school kids are just as likely to get these types of injuries as our high school athletes,” Braun said. Awareness is the key to combating concussion-related problems.
“There has just been so much more information on these types of injuries and we can now make our students that much safer,” said Dudley.
New information provided to the schools over recent years have caused concussions to be treated as an injury both on and off the field. An injured athlete isn’t just removed from play, they may need extra rest and assistance during the school day that they may not have received in the past.
In order for students to realize what a concussion can feel like, the Duerson Fund has made concussion goggles to help simulate the feeling. These goggles have been made available to most if not all of the schools in Delaware County by the foundation.
“It’s a more complete experience for them because they can know what a concussion feels like,” Duerson said. “If they don’t know what a concussion is they don’t know to report it.”