By John Raffel
It’s no secret that in boys’ high school athletics, the sport that presents the highest risk of injuries, including concussions, is football.
In girls athletics, the sport that is raising concern among sports officials for potential of injuries, including concussions, might surprise some observers.
It’s soccer.
Diane Strawser, who has coached girls’ soccer at East Grand Rapids, realizes that there is an alarming injury factor in her sport. But she’s hard-pressed to explain why. Her husband, Randy, is the women’s soccer coach at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids.
“I played, like all my life,” she said. “I played at a pretty high level. I haven’t seen as many [injuries] as I’m hearing about now. I don’t know if it’s kids are talking about it telling you if anything happened, or if the game has gotten more physical. I don’t remember as a kid seeing so many head injuries.
“I know when I was in college I had a concussion, but that’s because I fell and hit my head on the ground, but it wasn’t a contact injury with anybody.”
Big Rapids soccer player Erin Thompson said she has no second thoughts in terms of heading the ball.
“I think they’re fine, as long as your adrenaline is going and you’re going for the ball,” she said. “If you’re playing 100 percent, you don’t get injured.”
Kristy Gomez is a standout soccer player for Lansing Christian who acknowledges that the sport provides various risks.
“Anything can happen if you’re not careful,” she said. “Our whole team has headgear. You wear it over your head. If you play a sport, you put yourself on the line. It’s one of those things you have to deal with, I guess.”
Mia Hagy, a teammate of Gomez’s, has played soccer since the fifth grade.
“It’s pretty low and headgear is pretty popular,” she said. “I haven’t seen any concussions. We order headgear and usually wear it [during games.] I have my own, I wear it.”
When it comes to heading, “at first I didn’t like it because it hurt kind of,” Hagy said. “Then I got used to it. If you learn to head the ball properly, it doesn’t hurt.”
Others agree that the key is learning how to head the ball properly.
“I don’t know if in 15 years of girls soccer that I’ve really had any injuries related to that,” said Crossroads Charter Academy coach Ross Meads. “A lot of girls refrain from headers more than the guys do. I think part of the concern is, if done properly, it’s done with the forehead not the top of the head. A lot of times, you’ll see the girls that drop the head and end up getting the pressure of the ball directly on top of the head, driving it down to the neck and spine. If you do it properly with the forehead, the back and forth movement of the neck actually absorbs a lot of the shot.
“Part of the problem is that a lot of times, if they’re not taught correctly or they’re hesitating to do it, they wind up doing it at the top of the head.”
Meads concurred with studies that younger players are more likely to not know the proper way of doing the headers.
“This year, I lost my starting captain to an ankle injury,” Meads said. “As they’re running down the field, one girl puts her foot down. My player steps on her foot and twists her ankle. I don’t know if in 15 years I’ve had what I would call a severe injury…some broken bones this year…a player who had a concussion and had to be out for a few games.
“This day and age, concussions are something we have to be very concerned about. She was out for three weeks until the doctor cleared her to go back. That was from a head-to-head collision as they were both going for the ball. No question it happens. Generally at the high school level, most of the injuries are definitely not life-threatening and don’t have long-term effects.”
Big Rapids girls’ coach Emmanuel Foko doesn’t believe a high risk of injury exists in the sport.
“Very few girls head the ball,” he said. “Age could be a problem. In high school they should be able to head it without any issue.”
Nationwide, various American Youth Soccer Organizations have decided to ban heading. Palo Alto AYSO, for instance, has banned heading at the 10-and-under level. Referees treat it as a safety foul.
The organization doesn’t apply the rule to its select team but points out that players are not encouraged to head balls unless they’re able to execute it properly and that procedures are conducted to head balls using foam rubber.
A recent televised report on Rock Center, hosted by NBC’s Brian Williams, focused on what it called a growing concussion crisis in girls’ soccer. The report noted that girls make up 48 percent of the three million youngsters registered in U.S. Youth Soccer Leagues and quoted one medical expert as saying that studies show twice as many girls as boys are suffering concussions.
The report quotes the same medical expert as indicating that heading can be dangerous because players often collide, resulting in bumped heads and strained necks.
Cameron Smith, in a high school sports blog for Yahoo! Sports on May 15, wrote that girls’ soccer, not hockey, has the second-most concussions. “When not focused on football, media headlines about the health risks of youth sports tend to gravitate towards more traditional American contact sports like hockey or lacrosse. Yet a series of new studies prove conclusively that those sports can’t hold a candle to girls soccer, which has been at the vanguard of a steep rise in pediatric concussion cases between 2001 and 2010, by an astounding 58 percent, according to a study by Children’s Mercy Hospitals,” wrote Smith.
Smith continues in his blog that studies show that youngsters are getting concussions from heading the soccer ball. He said another study by Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine contends that excessive heading of soccer balls can cause brain damage.
He adds that some medical experts have called for banning headers all together.
Strawser has seen these reports but doesn’t think heading should be eliminated.
“People need to learn when and how to do it and how to protect themselves,” she said. “I don’t know what to think about it. But it’s scary. It’s a scary part of the game. There’s risks with every game you play.”
As for wearing headgear, “I actually coached a U12 girls team, and I think everyone that saw that program went out and bought one. I don’t know if they’ve been around long enough to know if they help a lot, especially if it’s a neck issue. [Headgear] is not going to help them.”
Hagy, who runs cross country and track, has watched other sports and does acknowledge that she doesn’t necessarily feel soccer is safer than other sports.
“It’s very competitive, you get hit a lot, can roll your ankle…it’s not like football, but you’re not padded, it can be painful,” Hagy said, adding that she doesn’t see injuries that often. “I rolled my ankle a couple of times but nothing major.”
Whether or not the various types of injuries in soccer occur more in various age levels compared to others is something Strawser said probably needs to be studied.
“One of the high school girls at East Grand Rapids headed the ball out of the air and was out for a couple of weeks,” Strawser said. “Another one in the same game got knocked and was out for a week. Two different injuries, concussions, but two different ways. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know why it’s happening so much. It’s a lot more than I remember.”