Youth Sports Safety- First, Last and Always!

June 4, 2011- 13-year-old Little Leaguer Hayden Walton dies after being hit in the chest with ball trying to bunt.

After taking two steps, he collapsed and died of “blunt chest trauma”  in front of a horrified crowd that included his parents." As a parent, the anguish over the loss of a child is incomprehensible," Stephen D. Keener, President and Chief Executive Officer of Little League Baseball and Softball, said in a statement posted on the league's website. "So words cannot adequately express our sorrow on the passing of Hayden." The league suspended play temporarily and offered grief counseling for anyone who needed it. But it's so rare, that as of 2004, there were only 128 reported incidents in Arizona.

The preceding news announcement became the topic of intense debate and  extremely fanatical rant by me at both my morning youth lacrosse practice session recently that spilled over to my evening gathering at the place we “Dumbledores of Sports” like to share a six pack instead of show off our six pack abs.

My son Mookie (real name Andrew) was 11 and played in a summer lacrosse league with a boy from Northport that was three years older than him. Mookie looked up to this boy as he did many who were good at the new sport he was growing to love. So you can imagine the shock and awe we all felt when we got a call  one night that Louis Acompora was dead from a blow to the chest while playing lacrosse.

That was 10 years ago. Since that time Louis’ parents started a foundation (more like a movement) in his honor and distributed hundreds of portable defibrillators all across Long Island so that horrible tragedy never happen again. That was great ,but apparently not nearly enough...some people just didn't get the memo.

Each and every year children in youth sports get seriously hurt UNNECESSARILLY! The PAL sends coaches for intense training each year. We cover the rules and spend a lot of the day on health and safety and security of our youth athletes. And they have explicit rules about not playing youth lacrosse, without athletic supporters, mouth guards and buttends on sticks, but nowhere do they insist on proper fitting pads or even rib guards.

The league, like many  organizations, has "rules" but does not want to “micro manage” parents and youth sports like the government bigwigs do with seat belt and bike helmet laws, or so they say. Ribguards protect our kids from getting hit in the kidneys and lower back and ribs and should be as mandatory as a mouth guard is.

Mookie got a floating rib injury three years ago playing lacrosse in college. The guards were his personal ones, because the college gives them ALL new equipment, but no rib guards whatsoever, which is more twisted than a pot of fusilli . He took “ribbings” from coaches and teammates when he donned them, but he is still alive because of them.

One boy in Maryland died from a ruptured kidney. One Hofstra player this season got a ruptured spleen and was out for the season if not more because of his lack of proper padding. My other PAL team's coaches and team’s parents support my anal neuroses in this matter to protect the kids and I have even exchanged ill-fitting stuff for better ones, so I know that I will never have to hear that phone call ever again.

You see, life is a journey with a toll bridge every 1,000 feet. One of the coaches that I coach lacrosse with now also coached my son years ago at EM Little League. Mookie was small (in college lacrosse he is 5'5, 115 lbs.- which is minute) and was a second baseman and pitcher.

His brilliant doctor/mother insisted he wear a “heart guard” for added protection with the full support of his coaches at that time but not the league (believe it or not). He even got hit by a line drive once and only got a multi-colored bruise but no blunt chest trauma. The league felt he “needed a helmet, cleats, cup, glove and metal bat to play, but "the heart guard was overkill” and would not make it mandatory like other equipment. Overkill? Not when 128 kids that have died in only one of 50 states in the last eight years and it could have been avoided (I’d hate to see the tallies when the rest of the polling districts report). But that is 127 youth athlete deaths that might have been avoided.

In 2012 and 2013 there may ask for votes or be petitions on having girls wear helmets for youth lacrosse, having portable nebulizers like portable defibrillators at youth sports to aid in breathing and to make other safety equipment mandatory. And I hope that you all support this like the recent movement in eliminating MRSA at youth wrestling matches, proper treatment for suspected concussions in youth sports and  proper hydration techniques in youth contact sports. This is NOT the equivalent to “bubble wrapping” our kids as some parents state.  

We need to smartly and safely protect our youth athletes, so no one ever has to hear the news that some Arod or Lebron or Polanco wannabe won’t be making practice ever again.  

You know when you hear a hypocrite? When you hear someone who says, “We suspended play temporarily and offered grief counseling”...but did NOTHING to avoid this from happening again in the future!