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Kids in sports: how you can protect them and still let them have fun

Kivo Daily Staff on January 29, 2024

Kids: Participating in sports can be an excellent way for kids under 13 to stay physically active, develop new skills, and make friends.

It can also help them build confidence and self-esteem and teach them valuable lessons about teamwork and sportsmanship.

However, parents and caregivers need to ensure that young children are appropriately supervised and participating in age-appropriate and safe activities.

Importance of sports for kids

There are many benefits for kids to participate in sports.

Some of the physical benefits include improved cardiovascular health, increased muscle strength and flexibility, and better coordination and balance.

Participating in sports can also help young children maintain a healthy weight and reduce the risk of obesity.

In addition to the physical benefits, sports have numerous mental and emotional benefits.

It can also teach them essential life skills such as teamwork, discipline, and goal-setting.

Participating in sports can also be an excellent way for young children to make new friends and socialize with their peers.

Participating in sports can be a valuable and rewarding experience for kids under 13, both in terms of their physical and mental health.

Parents and caregivers must encourage and support young children in their sports activities while ensuring they participate in safe and appropriate activities for their age.

Kids getting injured playing sports

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission released recent data showing that overall injuries from youth participation in football have declined since 2013.

Although it plateaued in 2020, injuries spiked back up in 2021.

The commission reports that more than a million kids were injured in sports bad enough to require a trip to the ER.

The data covers sports and other significant injuries from playground equipment and skateboards.

In 2021, children aged 5 to 14 were likely to get football injuries; there were 110,171 reported injuries in 2021 compared to 92,802 in young adults aged 15 to 24.

Meanwhile, soccer had 59,000 injured kids, while basketball had 79,207 injuries.

Concussion rates

Boys’ football has the highest concussion rates, with 10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures.

Girls’ soccer follows with 8.19 per 10,000 athlete exposures, while boys’ ice hockey had 7.69.

Although high-contact sports have a higher risk of severe injuries, even safe sports like swimming and track have a risk for overuse injuries.

Screening

Dr. Stuart Berger, the division head of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, warned that cardiac events could occur whether people play sports.

According to Berger, it’s crucial to screen cardiac events.

While kids are safe to play sports and exercise without worrying about cardiac events, it’s still important to do a physical, especially with family history, to find out who could be at risk.

“The concerns are that maybe there is somebody with an underlying abnormality,” explained Berger.

“The screening is designed to bring that out, and that we can identify, if possible, who those kids are.”

Families often cite head injuries as their major concern when their children enter sports.

Dr. Andrew Peterson, the clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Iowa, revealed that the bulk of kids’ concussions is sports-related.

However, he said there is no substantial evidence that a few concussions in childhood have any long-term impact on adulthood.

Peterson stressed that it is important to avoid reinjuring the head before the concussion fully heals.

“The thing we worry about most are these second impact events where people have a concussion on top of a concussion,” he explained.

Symptoms

Dr. Erin Grieb, the pediatric primary care sports medicine physician at Stanford Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, agreed with Peterson’s sentiments.

She said that coaches, referees, and families should learn to identify concussions to ensure the kids are cared for.

Grieb said the signs and symptoms could include:

Headaches
Sensitivity to light
Mental problems like confusion or difficulty paying attention
Sadness
Anxiety

Concussions can be present in many ways, and some symptoms may manifest in one trauma but others in a different concussion.

Prevention

Injuries are inevitable in sports, but there are ways to minimize the damage.

Ensure they wear appropriate protective gear, such as helmets, pads, and mouthguards, as needed for the specific sport.
Ensure they are properly conditioned and trained for the sport and do not overexert themselves.
Please make sure they are playing on properly maintained equipment and playing surfaces.
Follow the rules and guidelines for the specific sport to help reduce the risk of injury.
Encourage kids to speak up if they feel sick, tired, or in pain and seek medical attention.
Have an emergency action plan in place in case of injury.
Encourage kids to respect their opponents and follow good sportsmanship.
Consider the level of competition and the child’s age and skill level when choosing a sport or league.
Make sure the child is supervised by a responsible adult who is trained in first aid and CPR.

In almost every sport available, kids should be given time to rest to avoid injuries from overuse.

According to Grieb, athletes with head injuries need to take considerable time off to recover.

“You break a bone, I can put you in a cast and not let you use that arm. When you have a head injury, I can’t put your head in a cast,” said Grieb.

“You get one brain, so it’s really important that we let your brain heal.”

Continuing play

Despite the risks that sports pose for kids, it’s still an essential physical activity and habit.

Peterson says that regular movement is part of growing up.

Grieb added that it gives children leadership skills, life lessons, and, most importantly, fun, saying:

“If you’re focused on using proper techniques, you’re focused on following the rules of the game, and you have coaches and referees who are also engaged in that, then I think particularly risky sports can be safer than they have in the past.”

Reference:

How to protect your kids when they play sports, according to doctors

Richard M. Coleman and Hockey – Understanding the Advanced Field of Sports Analytics

Kivo Daily Staff on June 5, 2023

Image commercially licensed from Unsplash

For certain, Baby Boomers can remember collecting sports cards with posed images and recent statistics of their favorite sports figures. Many of those same baseball, basketball, football, and hockey sports cards became collectors’ items, with some fetching over a million dollars in recent trades. While it may be the image of the professional athlete that garners much attention, it is truly the statistics on the back of these cards that prove their worth.

Richard M. Coleman, hockey expert, was one of those young sports fanatics, and he just happened to have a talent for numbers, also. Today, he is a statistician based in Boca Raton, FL, and the co-founder of Coleman Analytics, a joint effort between Coleman and Mike Smith, the former general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team.

Understanding Sports Analytics

A close analysis of any subject or action will reveal deeper insight and greater discernment when making decisions regarding that subject or action. When it comes to sports, these informed decisions can make all the difference between a losing season and a Stanley Cup.

Sports analysis is the study of professional sports players (physical and mental traits), their athletic performance (on game day and in practice drills), along with the health of the sports organization (because the best players cost the most money). All of these factors can be represented by numbers, except the psychological state of the player. Yet, it is a player’s outstanding statistics that almost always point to a player with the right priorities, enormous drive, a keen knowledge of the game, and more.

In 2005, Richard M. Coleman, hockey analytics expert, introduced some of the most advanced metric counters in the history of professional hockey. These complex calculations include Corsi, which represents the number of times players attempt to make a goal rather than a simple count of goals when the puck enters the net. He also created the Fenwick metric, which excludes blocked shots and counts only shots that go into the net or are blocked from entering the net.

But, these numbers may not reflect whether the player is simply lucky or extremely talented. Therefore, he developed an analytical statistic called PDO, which gives the other stats real-world relevance and puts the numbers into a stronger focus. PDO calculates the on-ice shooting plus save percentage in a game.

With the PDO stat, coaches, managers, and trainers can determine how “lucky” or “unlucky” a team may be. Let’s face it, some shots that resemble trick shots are more luck than skill. Many of these types of Hail Marys are ruled out from the player’s true performance statistics.

These are just a few examples of how sports data can support a player or lead a team down a rabbit hole. No matter how much data a team has in their possession, if it is not leveraged correctly, then it becomes useless. There are many teams that rely on the outstanding statistics of their players to translate into dollars and cents for the franchise. And there are many examples in recent sports history where outstanding team performance results in outstanding team profits.

Tag: Hockey