It's hard to believe that, after over a year of hard work, MomsTEAM's high school football documentary, "The Smartest Team, [1] is finally being released [2]!
True to its name and that of this website, The Smartest Team was a group effort, which would not have been possible without the support of the entire Newcastle, Oklahoma football community, from the school superintendent to the athletic director and head football coach, from the athletic trainer to the parents (especially, Kerali Davis) and, of course, the players themselves. It would not have been possible without the contributions of our on-screen experts, Drs. Congeni, Meehan, Moser, and Cronin; and, last but not least, without the contributions of a talented and dedicated post-production staff, especially Taylor and Lauren Lench at Lench Films [3], and MomsTEAM Senior Editor, Lindsay Barton.
Our intent in making the documentary was to provide a visual way for the football community to understand all of the things it can do to make a football player safer through an emphasis on a set of principles - what we call the Six Pillars [4] - which football communities, large and small, can use as a foundation in the development of a sound concussion risk management program.
We see the documentary as a jumping off point. We don't underestimate the enormity of the challenge of making football as safe a sport as it can be. We know that it will require an ongoing commitment by all stakeholders. As our understanding of traumatic brain injury and technology evolves and changes, the ways in which football responds to the concussion challenge must evolve and change as well.
But we also know that, as The Smartest Team shows, there are steps that can be taken to make the game safer, right now. Whether it can be safe enough is up to parents to decide; that the decision on whether to allow their child to start playing football - and when - or to stop playing football, and when, is theirs, and theirs alone. But we want that decision to be informed by objective information, not by a "sky is falling" hysteria.
I envisioned The Smartest Team as a blueprint for a concussion risk management program; not by any means the only one, of course, but one that we believe fairly and objectively reflects:
Where we have come:
Where we are:
Where we are going:
As we have from our founding in 2000, MomsTEAM remains committed to doing what we can to arm youth sports parents with well-researched and practical information and advice from a team of world-class experts and journalists, not just about concussions but about every aspect of the youth sports experience.
We are confident that working together, we can, like the entire football community in Newcastle, Oklahoma, all become part of The Smartest Team.
Links:
[1] http://www.thesmartestteam.com
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Team-William-Meehan/dp/B00BT0NPLQ/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364581504&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=The Smarteest Team
[3] http://www.lenchfilms.com
[4] https://www.momsteam.com/node/5928
[5] https://www.momsteam.com/node/5986