Ashley Barber ‘20 Business/Ad Manager
The government lawmakers in New York are considering banning tackle football for kids under the age of 12. Researchers are finding it is damaging to kids’ brains, and causes negative effects to form while it is developing.
Many kids around the world are struggling from traumatic brain damage. What many people do not understand is with repeated head injuries, you can get chronic traumatic encephalopathy: also known as CTE. This is a neurodegeneration (the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, including death of neurons). There are many different diseases caused by neurodegeneration that are incurable. Symptoms often do not come about until many years after the injuries have occurred. CTE often gets worse over time and can lead to dementia (category for brain diseases that have a long time effect on you and most of the time leads to gradual decrease in the ability to think and to remember things. Some of the other effects of this is difficulties in speaking, emotional problems, and decrease in motivation).
While talking with parents from South Lyon Panthers, they stated “We don’t think our kids should have as much practice a week. They should practice less days, and also have practice not be so long. It would hurt for me to see any of my kids end up with brain damage later. Risking the rest of their life for a sport is not the best choice they can make.” It is good to not have such long practices because the nonstop hits to the head are not good for the kids’ developing brains. Kids in high school are more able to play tackle football because their brains are more developed than the younger kids. It is still not good for them to be taking all these hits to there head. High schoolers should still be aware of what can happen to their brain.
Photo courtesy of the New York Post
Lyon Life 