In 2012, seventeen year old Gene Odulio, a defensive back for St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School, dove to tackle an opposing player. Nicknamed Mene Gene, but known as a sweet, tenacious boy, Odulio made the tackle with a crunch of helmets and pads. His mother, watching from the sidelines, could see that he was shaky getting up. He kneeled down to get his footing but at the next huddle Mean Gene collapsed. He was rushed to hospital and died the following day of severe head trauma.

In 2014, 17 year old Rowan Stringer suffered two concussions back to back playing rugby. The first hit was probably quite minor—she didn’t mention it to her parents, though she did mention an injury to her knee. Just days later, a second hit left the young Ottawa athlete unconscious. She never recovered.

Following on the heels of a number of similarly tragic sports-related deaths and injuries across North America (recently described as an “epidemic” in one US newspaper), new training and awareness programs are required by coaches in amateur clubs across Canada. One such program, called Safe Contact, has been mandated by Football Canada (the National Governing Body of Canadian Amateur Football) to educate coaches in safe techniques for contact on the field.

According to Football Manitoba’s communications coordinator Corey Weir, “The premise of Safe Contact is to keep the tackler and the blockers head out of the play.”

The official numbers show that fatalities are very rare in football. For example, in the US, of the more than one 1 million players who participated in 2011, two high school football players died as a result of the game. To some, the numbers suggest that football is no less dangerous than other sports. To others, even two deaths in a million is too many, especially among high school kids.

For some experts, myself included, it is the injuries as much as the deaths caused by contact sports such as football, rugby and hockey that lead to grave concern. As a chiropractor, I believe that a good many of these injuries can be avoided—by educating coaches and football players about how their spine works, and which types of hits and tackles to avoid  and which positions to avoid during play, especially when tackling. In professional sports and even at the college level, many teams employ their own chiropractors to help prevent and treat injuries. But high school teams have neither the budgets nor the mandate for such measures. As such, I applaud the measures taken by Football Canada.

In my experience, many serious football injuries appear to be caused by compression of the cervical spine (IE the neck) during contact on the field. When a player collides with something (such as another player, or the ground or a goal post) the amount of force exerted can be considerable.

This resulting trauma can be exacerbated when a player lowers his head before impact. This movement causes a flexing in the neck which reduces the cervical spines ability to absorb the shock of the impact. Courses like Safe Contact attempt to teach this to coaches and players in an attempt to reduce both the number and severity of injuries among young athletes.

Another important practice in sport is to regularly condition muscles through gym workouts. In some sports, there is a tendency to train specific muscle groups that improve field performance while neglecting others that may be considered less important to performance (such as the neck). This obviously leaves the neck more vulnerable to injury, as stronger muscles will be better able to absorb the impact from a collision. And again, this is ever more the case when the head is kept upright during play!

At Rice Family Chiropractic, we take a holistic approach to all aspects of your health, from diet, to strengthening the muscles to treating aches and pains resulting from play. If you have any questions about your cervical spine, training for game day, or any other aspect of your health, please don’t hesitate to drop in for a consultation. Call us, or visit us at www.ricechiropractic.ca to find out more.