Safety Issues

In July 2015, a federal court in San Francisco threw out a suit by youth soccer players challenging the way FIFA and a group of U.S.-based soccer organizations deal with head injuries. A state court in Illinois appears poised to do the same in a suit by football players against the Illinois High School Association saying it hasn't done enough to protect them against the risk of concussions. Two attorneys say the cases may show the limits of litigation as a way to improve concussion safety.

A longtime high school sports administrator argues that the Illinois high school concussion class action lawsuit raises many questions that shouldn't be decided by the first lawyer to get to the courthouse but only after careful consideration by state legislatures and high school sports administrators of all the issues arising from concussions and other aspects of athlete safety.

California Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi is known best for her sponsorship of the state's youth sports concussion safety laws, but her voice in the legislature may be silenced by a shoplifting scandal.

The Penn State scandal didn’t occur in youth sports.  Yet, it is one of the rare occasions that sex abuse by coaches, which is a major problem in youth sports, got the type of national publicity that allowed the problem to penetrate the public consciousness.  The big question is whether we as a sports society are up to the task of doing to more to prevent future abuse.

 

Flash mob violence is likely to happen at a high school sports contest somewhere, sometime.  That's the problem with flash mobs: where and when they occur is up to the flash mob itself. 

Following a near fatal injury, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) announced that it will require metal bats to meet the Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution Test Performance Standard (BBCOR) and ban composite bats effective immediately.

The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is implementing a new concussion rule for the 2010-11 academic year which not only requires immediate removal of any athlete suspected of having suffered a concussion but bans his return until cleared to play by an appropriate health-care professional. This rule also covers youth leagues that play under high school rules or modified high school rules, but does not apply in those states where even stricter concussion laws have been recently passed.

It’s the biggest fear of anybody who runs an urban athletic program, and it just happened in Chicago. A group of gang-bangers with no affiliation with your school or program decide to bring their foolishness into your gym.