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The Smartest Team

Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

A Mother's Day Wish List

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 05/09/2013 - 18:20. | 0 comments

It's May once again. Time for spring sports, warmer weather, longer days, and, of course, Mother's Day. This year, instead of celebrating mothers with the usual cards and flowers, I have put together a special wish list for the mothers, grand mothers, step mothers and other caregivers in this country with kids playing sports.

Brooke de Lench and Taylor Lench

Here's this year's list:

This Mother's Day, as has been her Brooke's practice in years past, she has a wish list for making youth sports better. Here's this year's list.
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Gretchen Rose
Gretchen Rose

Watching "The Smartest Team" Documentary: A 3-Day Test of Endurance, But Worth The Effort

Submitted by Gretchen Rose on Mon, 05/06/2013 - 15:51. | 3 comments

I was thrilled to get my copy of "The Smartest Team." This great documentary is the creation of MomsTEAM founder Brooke de Lench, who clearly has a great interest in concussion prevention in sports - especially football. Having had a concussion as a child, I know all too well about the pain, the setbacks, and the long road it sometimes take to recovery. I had to relearn the multiplication tables for 6s and 7s in 5th grade! I was mortified. To this day I have trouble with 6x8=48!Gretchen Rose and son

A football mom from Texas was thrilled to get her copy of "The Smartest Team" and couldn't wait to watch it with her son and his football buddies. While the short attention span of 12-year-old boys meant that it would end up being a three-day test of endurance, it proved to be a very educational experience.
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Sports Concussions: Signs, Symptoms and Behaviors

According to the most recent international consensus of concussion experts, concussion signs (those noticed by coaches, parents and teammates) and symptoms (feelings or problems experienced by the athlete) fall into five "clusters."
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Rawlings Football Helmet Contest!

Is your high school football program in the market for some new helmets for the 2013 season? To promote the recent release of our new high school football concussion documentary, "The Smartest Team." MomsTEAM is running a contest for 38 brand new, 2012 Rawlings adult football helmets left over from the filming of movie.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Stricter Enforcement of Rules Against Helmet-to-Helmet Contact: The Time For Action Is Now

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 04/11/2013 - 13:10. | 0 comments

The most recent consensus statement on concussion in sport (1) states that "rule enforcement may be a critical aspect of modifying injury risk."    

Watch any high school football game and you will see a lot of helmet-to-helmet contact in the trenches, much of which has been technically illegal for over three decades. The problem is that penalties are rarely, if ever, called; so much so, that linemen see leading with their helmet, perversely, as a form of self-protection. The time for that to change is now.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

The Smartest Team Is Out!

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 17:42. | 0 comments

It's hard to believe that, after over a year of hard work, MomsTEAM's high school football documentary, "The Smartest Team, is finally being released! 

The release of MomsTEAM's high school football documentary, "The Smartest Team," is the culmination of everything we have learned over the last 13 years as the pioneer in youth sports concussion education, and 13 months working with a high school football community and a team of experts to implement a concussion risk management program we call the Six Pillars.
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The Six Pillars of Concussion Risk Management: The MomsTEAM Approach

Head injuries in football, as in other contact and collision sports, cannot be completely eliminated, but there ARE steps that can be taken to minimize risk. MomsTEAM's high school football concussion documentary, "The Smartest Team," focuses on "The Six Pillars" of concussion risk management: education, protection, identification, treatment, return to play and retirement.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Lost in Translation: The Perils of Tweeting About Concussions

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 02/28/2013 - 18:14. | 0 comments

One of the things I try to do every day is carve out time to keep up with what people are saying on Twitter, and occasionally throwing in my two-cents worth. For those of you reading this blog who follow MomsTEAM on Twitter, it won't come as any big surprise that concussions in sports seems to be the topic that most often lights up the youth sports Twittersphere.

But as anyone active on Twitter also knows, condensing one's thoughts into 140 character "tweets" is often a challenge, and can sometimes leave a lot to be desired, especially when one is talking about a subject as complex as concussions.

Last night was one of those times.

As anyone active on Twitter knows, condensing one's thoughts into 140 character "tweets" is often a challenge, especially when one is talking about a subject as complex as concussions. Last night was one of those times.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Chronic Under-Reporting Of Concussion: Is Changing The Culture A Realistic Solution?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 03:39. | 7 comments

 

If your child plays a contact or collision sport, whether at be at the youth, middle school or high school level, odds are that at some point in their athletic career they will suffer a concussion. How well they recover depends a lot on how quickly their concussion is identified so they can be removed from practice or game action. 

A lot of student-athletes - a declining percentage, fortunately - don't appreciate precisely when they have suffered a concussion. There are a lot of reasons:

Most athletes won't self-report concussion symptoms to sideline personnel, much less voluntarily remove themselves from the game. Changing the culture is one way to address the problem of chronic under-reporting, but it can't be counted on as a panacea.
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Brooke de Lench
Brooke de Lench

Limiting Full-Contact Practices in High School Football: The Time to Act is Now!

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Tue, 02/05/2013 - 22:23. | 0 comments

For those of you who may be wondering why you haven't seen a blog from me in recent weeks, there is a simple answer: I have been head down (pardon the pun) finishing up MomsTEAM's high school football concussion documentary, The Smartest Team.

Newcastle, Oklahoma football player about to be tackledTwo news items on the subject of brain trauma in high school football, however, hit my desk over the past week which deserve comment.

Despite a growing body of evidence which suggests that brain trauma to football players can result, not just from violent helmet-on-helmet collisions hard enough to lead to concussions but from the cumulative effect of less forceful, but repetitive, subconcussive blows, no steps have been taken to limit such trauma at the high school level. That may be about to change.
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