Lucas Punkari
With the impact of concussions in sports continuing to be a hot topic across the country, the Ontario government announced this past week that it plans to introduce legislation aimed at helping combat the epidemic.
At Fort Frances High School, however, those issues already have been looked at and a protocol has been in place since October, with the plan at officially being implemented at the start of the new year.
“Looking at what the government wants to do, and what we have done here already, we might be one step ahead of the game with what we are doing,” noted Fort High athletic director Shane Beckett.
“What we have is a pretty standard protocol in place that we have brought in, and what we did was look at what’s been done at other schools across the country and then established one as our own,” he added.
Under the protocol at Fort High, if an athletic coach suspects a player of having suffered a concussion during the course of a game, that player will sit for the rest of it and the coach will inform the child’s parents that they believe the student has a concussion.
From there, the athlete will be checked out by a doctor. If everything is okay, they will be allowed to return to action as if nothing happened.
However, if there are signs of a concussion, the protocol states the athlete has to be symptom-free through four different stages in a 24-hour period before they can suit up again.
“That includes going through certain exercises that become more rigorous as they progress through the four days, with the parents and the coaches monitoring the process,” Beckett explained.
“After a minimum of four days, the athlete will make another visit to the doctor to see how they are and if they are symptom-free, then away we go.
“However, if the symptoms do return at any point prior to that, then we go back a stage before we progress to the next stage,” he noted.
The two Muskie hockey programs were the first to be brought under the new protocol after a meeting with the coaches and parents of players took place in early January.
Those involved with the Muskie football program also will be brought up to speed with the school’s plan this spring and fall, with the court sports and soccer teams also having discussions when their seasons commence later this spring and next school year.
“We had one kid that went through the protocol so far, and they were back going in four days,” Beckett noted.
“It seems at first that it’s a bit of a process,” he conceded. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about the safety and the future of the kids that is the big deal here.”
Although the new system is working well so far, Beckett does worry that perhaps students who suffer a concussions may not be as willing to share that information with their coaches as they are right now.
“Right now, the kids have been very forthcoming in coming to us and telling us that their head isn’t feeling quite right,” he said.
“But now, if they are diagnosed with a concussion and they know that they will be out for a minimum of four days, maybe the kids won’t be as forthcoming as they are at the moment.
“And that’s something we don’t want to see happen,” he stressed.
As for the proposed legislation by the provincial government, while Beckett feels it’s great to have information on concussions readily available to coaches and the parents, he would like to see more done for other athletic ventures in communities besides high school teams.
“I would like to see them take a look at doing things in regards to community-based programs, which we have no control over,” he explained.
“If a kid gets a concussion playing Midget ‘AA’ hockey, and we don’t know about it and we let them go back into Phys. Ed. or into one of court sports, we are letting them come back into a dangerous situation,” Beckett warned.
“While it’s great to have a mandate here to follow, we need to make sure that we have everything set up across the board in the community and high school programs,” he stressed.
