Health & Safety

The benefits of setting boundaries - physical, social, and sexual - at the pre-season meeting are numerous, say experts.

It is very disappointing not to be chosen for the team for which your child has tried out. Whether your child has been cut from a school, club or league team, it is just plain painful not to be selected...

Nearly 5 million children in this country suffer from asthma. Without immediate treatment to keep a child's airways from constricting, asthma can be fatal.
Despite the risks, asthma
shouldn't keep your child out of sports. With proper precautions, they
can play, as long as parents follow safety tips.

A strain is a twist, pull and/or tear of a muscle and/or tendon. Tendons are fibrous cords of tissue that attach muscles to bone. Strains and sprains are among the most common sports injuries.

Shin splints are an inflammation of the tendons attaching the shin muscles to the
tibia (shin bone) and are common in sports involving a lot of running like track and field, soccer, basketball and lacrosse.  There are various ways to prevent and treat shin splints.

Football is still responsible for the majority of concussions at the
high school level and the highest concussion rate.

Youth football coaches should adopt practice modifications and employ a strategy to acclimatize players to perform in the heat, along with a fluid replacement strategy in anticipation of young players who begin practice already dehydrated, according to new recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the world leader in the scientific and medical aspects of sports and exercise. The guidelines are outcomes from a recent expert panel convened for an ACSM scientific roundtable on youth football and heat stress.

The best way to prevent the spread of staph infections such as the antibiotic-resistant skin infection or "super bug" known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus ("MRSA") is to maintain good personal hygiene in football locker room, schools and at home.

An youth athlete's natural flexibility varies by age. Those with poor muscle flexibility experience more soreness, tenderness and pain after exercise. The less flexible the muscle, the more easily it is injured.   Here are simple tests to test flexibility of major muscles and tendons prone to injury in soccer.