Youth football decline linked to concussion concerns
By Patrick Kotnik
The movie “Concussion” released in 2015 starring Will Smith and Alec Baldwin did more than inform people about the brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
It may have caused youth football participation numbers to dwindle.
CTE has been linked numerous deaths of former NFL players such as Mike Webster, Dave Duerson, Junior Seau and Andre Waters.
As a result of CTE’s discovery and impact on former NFL players, leagues and organizations across the country from youth, middle school, high school, college and the pros have taken bigger steps to ensure the safety of players such as rules limiting the amount of contact practices and moving kickoffs.
The approach to football players’ safety is night and day compared to the past.
Willie Cunningham, a former West Virginia University football player under head coach Don Nehlen from 1985–1990, has been coaching youth football for over a decade and currently coaches Westover in the Mountain State Youth Football League in Monongalia County, West Virginia.
Cunningham himself has noticed the changes in how football players’ safety and concussions are approached from his playing days to his years coaching now.
“When we played, if you could see two or three fingers you’re back in the game,” Cunningham said. “You had to be completely knocked out for two days probably because if you were a good running back, or a good player, they want you on the field.”
Cunningham is the father of two boys who also play football — one plays youth football and the other plays in high school.
The former Mountaineer said he never hesitated to let his sons play football and that the risk of a concussion isn’t just limited to football. He cites a soccer game being the place where he saw the worst concussion he’s ever seen.
“I’m that parent that three concussions and I think that should be enough for you,” Cunningham said.
Ester Jones is another parent who has a son who plays football in the Mountain State Youth Football League.
Her 11-year old son, Eric, plays for the Cheat Lake Chargers and like Cunningham, Jones didn’t have any hesitation when it came to letting her son play football, citing her son’s love for the sport.
“I feel like if he were doing something that I was making him do, I would be more concerned about it,” Jones said. “I feel like he’s doing something that he enjoys and he’s very good at it so it’s one of those things where he could walk across the street and get hit by a car, he could be in an airplane and the airplane crash so I feel like it’s a risk that you take, but there’s a risk you take everyday.”
Despite these cases, there are parents everywhere who are hesitant to let their children play football.
That has been the case in Monongalia County, according to James Matthews, who founded the Mountain State Youth Football League in 2012. Matthews, along with Cunningham and Jones, has seen the league’s participation numbers drop.
Since release of “Concussion” in 2015, Matthews estimates the league’s participation numbers have fallen close to 20 percent.
“I would really say the affirmation for everybody wasn’t really out there about CTE until that movie came out,” Matthews said. “And from the time the movie came out, our enrollment just slowly declines and declines.”
Matthews charges $100 per participate in the youth football league and provides all of the league’s equipment and resources such as helmets, shoulder pads, venues, referees, a videographer, etc. Matthews also provides scholarships to players if their families cannot afford the $100 for them to play.
The league is made up of flag football teams, which consists of kids in preschool through second grade, B-teams involving second graders up to fourth graders and A-teams, consisting of kids from fifth through seventh grade.
Decreasing numbers mean fewer players for teams, which results in the loss of teams during a given season, which is the case for Matthews and the league this year.
Matthews said he loses a one or two teams each year due to the dwindling numbers.
“The impact is not having kids, not having full teams,” Matthews said. “Like this year I’m short, I didn’t have two teams because I didn’t have the numbers.”
Make no mistake about it though, Matthews knows CTE and concussions are things that can’t be taken lightly, which is why the league has taken steps to protect its players.
Since the league’s creation, Matthews requires each coach in the Mountain State Youth Football League to get concussion certified through HealthWorks. The league also follows the concussion protocol from the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission and has an athletic trainer present for each game that is played on Sunday’s.
The league also doesn’t allow live punts which means if a team wants to punt on fourth down, the team sends out a long snapper and punter onto the field while the opposing team sends just one or two punt returners. These non-contact punt plays only pertain to the A-teams. The B-teams don’t punt at all.
Youth players’ growth and development is another issue that teams face when it comes to ensuring their safety from concussions.
In one study, it was discovered that 24 children out of the 60 that were studied between the ages of 9 and 18 who had more impacts to the head at the end of a season, showed signs of damage to brain development.
According to Matthews, youth football players wearing helmets forces their neck muscles to carry weight they’re not usually used to carrying.
“You’re used to carrying just your eight pound head, but now you put on a two, three-pound helmet your head and neck muscles are used to eight pounds and now it’s gotta get used to 10, 12, 13 pounds depending on the size of your head,” Matthews said.
The youth football players’ body development is what Matthews believes leads to players getting concussions.
“At the youth level, the concussions that we get at the youth level is due to the slapping of the head, meaning your neck muscles aren’t defined to hold a helmet up,” Matthews said. “You as a little kid, if you have a bigger head, you have more weight you have to carry around on the neck. So it’s not blunt force, which is what these parents think are causing these concussions. You might get two or three maybe a year of those.”
One tactic that Matthews has told the youth football coaches to do is to have the players take their helmets off for some hitting drills.
It might seem like an odd strategy, but Matthews believes going through certain hitting drills without a helmet forces players to use the right techniques when it comes to proper tackling in football.
“If you take a shell off someone’s head, they’re less likely to lead with the head because now they know it’s not protected,” Matthews said. “They’re going to try to keep the head from hitting the ground. That makes them use their neck muscles a lot more and it also teaches them do not lead with your head.”
There are other potential solutions to help combat concussions and head injuries such as constructing lighter helmets or having helmets and shoulder pads with sensors that can help trainers and coaches detect when a player may take a hard hit, but price and development are the obstacles standing in the way.
The sensors on helmets are being used by North Canton Hoover High School in Ohio.
“If you want football to continue, I don’t know the answer to fix that because it’s hard to make a lighter helmet,” Matthews said. “That’s great stuff that you’ve got to make it affordable for the public.
Like Matthews, Cunningham also believes a concussion can be suffered by a youth football player due to their body developing, but when it comes to creating new equipment to combat concussions, he doesn’t believe they will eliminate the risk of concussions altogether.
“Your brain is still developing and stuff and they’re making better equipment now, but there’s definitely no preventing a concussion,” Cunningham said. “I don’t care how much money they put into equipment. It’ll slow it down a little bit, but it’s going to happen if the right hit happens.”
As a coach, Cunningham’s team practices three days a week with players wearing just helmets during the first practice, full pads with “little bit of contact” the next day followed by a walk through during the last practice day with full pads on.
Not much tackling takes place during the practices, according to Cunningham, but the team uses another piece of equipment to help improve the players’ tackling skills.
“You just don’t tackle that much in practice,” Cunningham said. “But we got those round doughnut things, the wheel and you roll those and that takes everything out of it. If they hit with their helmet, you tell them and you correct it, but it doesn’t give them a concussion and it helps them develop their tackling skills a lot better.”
Jones supports what the youth football league has done to address players’ safety and concussions, citing its commitment to show kids the proper technique to tackle.
“They take the time to show the kids the right way to tackle and to actually give in with seeing tackles so that if you do it correctly, you’re less likely to get a concussion or have something bad happen,” Jones said. I would be more concerned with a child who starts playing football in high school who never played in middle school or pee-wee than I would with someone who started out in pee-wee and worked their way through.”
But as far as the future of football goes, Matthews and Cunningham think it looks bleak. As for the reasons why, Cunningham mentioned the big contracts NFL players are getting, lack of loyalty in the NFL and the rising popularity of sports like lacrosse.
“I don’t think it’s the concussions or anything that’s ruining football now,” Cunningham said.
Jones understands the reasons why changes have taken place within football and doesn’t see it vanishing anytime soon.
“I don’t think it’s going away,” Jones said. “But I do think that it makes sense, even with the NFL they changed the helmets recently and there were people that complained about that, but I feel like anything that they’re doing is to try and make people safer.”
Rather than people feeling scared about CTE and the risk of it through playing football, Matthews believes it’s most important to educate people about it as well as the risk of concussions and CTE in all sports rather than just football.
But for that education to come to fruition, it may take years, according to Matthews.
“It takes you to teach us in school and slowly as those kids get older and become adults, they have the knowledge,” Matthews said. “To change an older person’s mind on something is so hard and it takes so much work, you don’t have time and you don’t have the output of the information and you don’t have the availability of meeting with these parents to get that information out.”
For today, the games will still continue to be played, but those in Matthews’ and Cunningham’s positions carry more responsibility than people in the same position did years ago.
“It’s a little bit more stressful now than it used to be,” Cunningham said regarding coaching. “That’s someone’s baby out there and they’re trusting you. Even though we’re not out there hitting the kids, it’s going to be our fault somewhere in there.
“That’s the way I look at it with football, it’s not like it used to be, but they had to change a little bit of it because if it was like it used to be there was a lot of head slapping and a lot of older players that had the CTE was in the 70’s and in the 80’s and some of the 90’s with Junior Seau. We don’t know about the 2000’s kids yet because they’re still playing. And once you get it, it’s aggressive.”
