Playing Hurt: Untrained coaches lead to injuries

Part one in a series.
By Randy Griffith
CNHI News Service

It was all about making the team for a dozen Danbury, Conn., boys who dressed in plastic garbage bags on Labor Day weekend last year for a sweat-down session just days before their football team’s first game.

The Pop Warner football league restricted players on their team to 110 pounds. The boys all were over the mark. One had to lose nearly 9 pounds to be eligible.

In a little more than 24 hours, all lost enough weight to play.

Parents later complained to authorities that two of the team’s volunteer coaches went too far with the pre-game weight loss regimen for the boys, ages 7 to 13, some of whom were driven around in cars with windows up and heaters on. They also were taken to a local sauna and given over-the-counter diuretic pills to speed the loss of fluid and reduce weight.

Police arrested the coaches – Joshua Weyer, 22, and Christopher Murphy, 24 – and they were charged with felony child endangerment, with the possibility of 10 years in prison. Both avoided prosecution when they entered a program for first-time offenders.

The case shocked Danbury and its youth sports community. It also illustrated what some youth sports experts call a national problem of untrained coaches who, through ignorance or determination to win at all costs, expose children to injuries that could have life-long effects.

More than 50 million children play organized sports in the United States, according to the National Council of Youth Sports. Each year more than 1 million suffer an injury that causes missed school, forces a trip to the hospital or requires surgery.

Besides the usual sprained ankles and knees, doctors report a surge of serious injuries from overtraining, poor athletic techniques and rushed recovery from old injuries – cases that might have been avoided if adults had taken steps to prevent them.

Still, many schools and sports organizations require little training or proof that their coaches know how to keep such injuries from happening.

“It’s a great problem and something we have to address,” said Dr. Lyle Micheli, director of sports medicine at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “Quality of the adult (coaches’) supervision is key.”

A CNHI News Service survey of coaching requirements found seven states have no medical training standards at all for school sports coaches. Another dozen have no requirements for teachers who become coaches. Most of the others have limited safety guidelines.

In youth sports groups, rules are just as thin. Pop Warner football, for example, has no certification for coaches, though starting next year it will make them attend one-day clinics that include tips on player safety and health.

Advocates for tougher standards say states and sports groups gradually are tightening rules for coaches, especially as concern grows about injuries.

Small athletes, big injuries
Statistics show injuries among young athletes are common, though they do not necessarily show how those injuries are changing. Evidence of that is instead found walking into the offices of doctors like Lyle Micheli, who report they are seeing more children suffering from problems more commonly found in older adults.

Year-round organized sports, and their repetitive drills, have introduced adult conditions like stress fractures, bursitis and tendonitis to the world of children’s games.

“We are now seeing these overuse, or overtraining, injuries that we never used to see very much before,” said Micheli, who works with youth sports groups and advocates education about injuries and their prevention.

Rick Roberts is an example of a young athlete who suffered such an injury. It ended his dream of a professional baseball career.

Roberts, who grew up playing baseball near Johnstown, Pa., was a high school standout when the Detroit Tigers drafted him in 1997. He played in the minor leagues for the Tigers, and later the Los Angeles Dodgers, before landing on the Dodgers’ big league roster for spring training in 2003.

After only six games, Roberts’ arm hurt so much he was sent to a doctor. He needed arthroscopic shoulder surgery to repair damage to his rotator cuff and shoulder ligament.

“It was just wear and tear over the years,” Roberts said, because he had never learned proper pitching techniques until he played professional baseball.

Two procedures to repair the damage sapped Roberts’ pitching prowess. The injury sidelined his major league dream.

It is impossible to know if coaches with more training might have prevented Roberts’ injuries. But Roch King, coordinator of the graduate coaching program at Ball State University, is part of a movement that believes greater standardized training will at least reduce the number of those cases.

In addition to a graduate program, King leads a national council that reviews training programs to determine if they meet standards set by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Their standards, first published 10 years ago, ensure training programs cover topics such as sports philosophy, ethics, first aid and injury prevention. Coaches also must learn how to communicate with players and parents.

“We are trying to provide an easier platform for the states to determine how to accredit coaches,” King said.

High-profile cases
Yet change often comes only after a high-profile incident. In New Jersey, for example, parents of a ballplayer struck in the face by a fly ball 20 years ago sued his coaches. The case was settled out of court but led to that state’s so-called Little League Law, which protects coaches with training from lawsuits.

Danbury’s Pop Warner football case may be one of the first where coaches have been criminally charged for excessive training. While the effects of that incident remain to be seen, it has at least stirred passions in a city that devotes more than 1,200 acres to parks, tennis courts and ball fields.

The coaches’ attorneys repeatedly have declined to talk about what happened, and the coaches themselves have not been available to comment. Local prosecutors and police have said little and have protected the names of the parents who complained.

The national group, Pop Warner Little Scholars Inc., has banned both coaches for life and condemned such radical tactics. Spokesman Josh Pruce said the group also has taken steps to protect young athletes.

Next year, he said, coaches will be required to participate in one-day clinics that include coaching principles.

“Danbury had zero to do with the change,” said Pruce.

CNHI News Service Elite Reporting Fellowship recipient Randy Griffith is a reporter at the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune-Democrat and may be reached at rgriffith@tribdem.com.
Copyright © 1999-2007 cnhi, inc.

Online exclusive
The Mineral Wells Index will publish the next two parts of this series only online:

Wednesday: Helmet to helmet.
Friday: Training the coaches.

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