By Nicole Shearin
At a recent away football game, Zeb Rogers was miles from a filing cabinet and nowhere near his office desk computer when he noticed a player limping a bit. However, with a few clicks on his smartphone, Prince Avenue Christian’s athletic trainer could instantly check the athlete’s medical records to see if there was cause for concern from a prior medical issue.
A theme in high school sports has been the increased publicity highlighting the risk of injury to high school athletes. Parental concern has resulted in a decrease in the number of participants in football. According to an article from Reuters Health by Lisa Rapaport, high school football peaked in 2008 at 1.11 million participants and declined by over 5% to 1.05 million by 2017.
“The information given out there scares some parents and there is a certain group of people that don’t want their kids in any kind of dangerous or unsafe environment,” said Greg Vandagriff, head football coach at Prince Avenue. “Football is definitely that for some people.”
Yet realistically, injuries are a fact of life in sports. According to an article by Stanford Childrens’ Health, there are nearly eight million high school student athletes, who suffer nearly 2,000,000 sports related injuries. The most publicized injuries are the 300,000 concussions that occur each year.
In spite of the risks of injury, a new study on The Season by the National Athletic Trainers Association shows that a majority of high school parents believe that the benefits derived through participation in sports outweigh the risks. Playing sports teaches leadership skills, team play, social skills, and physical fitness.
However, ignoring the issue of parental concern could place various high school programs at risk if the opinion of reward versus risk swings too far in the “I won’t let my child participate” direction. Accordingly, numerous actions are being taken by Prince Avenue and the Georgia High School Association to enhance the safety of student athletes.
“The GHSA has a sports medicine advisory committee that meets twice a year and they discuss various ways to ensure the safety of student-athletes and contemplate rule changes or equipment improvements that should be put in place,” said Don Corr, the associate director at the Georgia High School Association.
Rogers said that Prince Avenue does a great job of staying up to date with the newest and safest equipment for their players in all sports. As an example, the football team is currently using one of the helmets listed on the NFL’s top helmets list. In addition, all coaches ensure that their athletes are educated properly regarding safety risks. For example, coach Vandagriff and Rogers described how they train their players to tackle safely and correctly.
A further commitment to athletes’ safety is demonstrated by Prince Avenue’s implementation of the PRIVIT Documentation System in July of this year. This system is an accessible and user-friendly electronic tool used to collect, store, and manage a student athlete’s information.
According to Prince Avenue’s athletic director, Richard Ricketts, the system allows coaches and trainers to instantly access an athlete’s information to ascertain suitability to play, identify sources of difficulty in the event of injury, and to determine the best courses of action. It incorporates the three forms required of all Prince Avenue student-athletes before they are allowed to compete: the GHSA Pre-Participation Physical form, the Concussion Awareness form, and the Sudden Cardiac Awareness form.
Rogers emphasized the feasibility and convenience of the system. “PRIVIT allows us to document everything without having to fill out paperwork after practice,” Rogers said. “Everyone who is authorized has the smartphone app that gives them instant access to the information while on the sideline or on the field.”
Of course, there is the issue of adherence to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which is a law ensuring the protection and confidentiality of medical records. Shelby Fornal, Director of Customer Support at PRIVIT, explained that the company uses up to date encryption to ensure no one can gain unauthorized access to the information.
“When parents choose the team their child is allowed to sign up for, the software executes simultaneous authorization to those individuals who need access to that athlete’s information,” said Fornal. “PRIVIT allows for the secure collection, easy maintenance, and instant access of a student athlete’s health information that will in turn reduce the likelihood and severity of injury.”
Interestingly, Prince Avenue’s encouragement of kids to play multiple sports also contributes to participant safety. A 2017 research study at the University of Wisconsin showed that athletes who play multiple sports in different seasons suffer fewer injuries.
Bud Cooper, a professor of kinesiology at UGA, said that the first focus of high school athletic programs should be injury prevention, but only about half of high schools have a full-time trainer.
Ricketts and his staff say that the character building aspects of sports are the most important benefit of participation—athletics should be co-curricular activities, not extra-curricular. Therefore, the school will continue to take steps to enhance student athletes’ safety and encourage participation.
