Month: February 2017

2017 Youth Sport Safety Governing Bodies Meeting

Samantha Scarneo, MS, ATC, Director of Sport Safety

Screen Shot 2017-02-26 at 6.48.14 PMFour years ago, Dr. Casa had a vision to bring together the representatives responsible for safety initiatives for the leading national governing bodies (NGBs) of youth sports and educate them on how to make their sport safer. This past week, the four-year effort concluded with a meeting at the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA) headquarters in Carrollton, TX. We have accomplished an astonishing amount over the past three years. In 2015, the 1st Youth Sport Safety Governing Bodies (YSSGB) Meeting was convened by the Korey Stringer Institute and hosted by the National Football League in New York, NY. The goal of this inaugural meeting was to educate the NGB attendees on the top causes of sudden death in sport and to learn what various NGBs have done up to this point to improve youth athlete safety. From this meeting, we were able to leave with a better understanding of the inner-workings of the NGBs; we also learned that it was extremely difficult for NGBs to provide any type of mandate or requirement because they do not have a structure to govern and oversee mandates outside of sport rules. From there, we knew we needed to create a document that outlines what the best practice recommendations should be for youth organizations.

Several position statements, consensus statements, inter-association task force documents, and research articles have been published by professional organizations. However, these documents have had a focus on the high school and older athlete, leaving paucity in the literature as to best practice recommendations for the youth athlete. The 2nd YSSGB meeting led by the Korey Stringer Institute and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association in 2016 focused on creation of a document and aimed to get feedback from the NGBs on what should be included in a best practice document. The outcome from this meeting includes a document to serve as the first of its kind to guide recommendations for improving sport safety for the youth athlete.

 

It was also in the 2016 meeting that the leaders in the NGBs requested to KSI and NATA that we convene to discuss how to continue efforts to make youth sport safer. Which led to our objective for the 2017 YSSGB meeting to discuss the potential tasks that should be addressed for future efforts and again lead by the NATA and KSI.

 

This year’s attendees included a mix of both new faces and veterans to the meeting:

 

US All Star Federation USA Lacrosse
USA Baseball US Soccer
USA Basketball USA Football
USA Track and Field USA Wrestling
USA Gymnastics USA Hockey
American Academy of Pediatrics American Medical Society for Sports Medicine
Korey Stringer Institute National Athletic Trainers Association
Safe Kids World Wide

 

At the meeting, we discussed strengths, areas for improvement, facilitators and barriers for promoting safety initiatives within their own organizations. We had veteran NGBs that discussed their successes and struggles in spearheading the youth sport safety initiatives, while other NGBs that are relatively new shared their recent achievement in mandating the background checks for their coaches, which is also an important topic to be addressed by the NGBs to ensure youth athlete safety. Every representative from the NGBs believed that they could continue to learn from this collaborative effort and were  hopeful for future meetings to continue their discussions in keeping their youth athletes safe.

 

I would be remiss if I did not conclude with a heart-felt thank you to the NATA for their extremely warm welcome to their facilities and for their sponsorship of the meeting. Specifically, to Katie Scott, MS, ATC, Athletic Trainer in Residence at the NATA, for all of her time and effort into the creation of this meeting during the past two years, and for her continued commitment, dedication, and passion for improving the profession of athletic training and sport safety for all athletes. I would also like to thank the NATA Foundation for hosting our dinner on Thursday night, and to Camelback and Jones and Bartlett for donating their products.

 

As I have concluded this blog post the past two years, If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”—Unknown.

The Rise of the Quantified Athlete Review

Courteney Benjamin, MS, CSCS, Associate Director of Communication and Assistant Director of Athlete Performance and Safety

Gabrielle Giersch, MS, Associate Director of Education and Assistant Director of Athlete Performance and Safety

 

It’s not a secret that the use of wearable technology in sports is a hot topic among many of the world’s leading experts in sports and research. The popularity of this idea led to the creation of the first symposium of its kind called “The Rise of the Quantified Athlete.” Harvard Innovation Labs, Sports Innovation Lab, and OneTeam Collective worked together to create what is sure to be the first of many similar meetings between the world’s leading experts and innovators in sports and technology. At this symposium, there were four panels designed for informing, optimizing, and focusing the use of wearable technologies in sports and a fifth panel of elite athletes centering on their experiences with various technologies.

We were fortunate to attend this meeting at the world-class facilities of the Harvard Innovation Lab on Harvard University’s campus in Boston, MA. This lab “is a unique collaboration and education space designed to foster entrepreneurship and innovation across Harvard.1

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This group worked with the Sports Innovation Lab founders Isaiah Kacyvenski (NFL veteran), Angela Ruggiero (Hockey Olympic Gold Medalist), and Joshua Walker (Researcher) to put on this event.  The purpose of this organization is to “identify and evaluate the technology products and services that will power the future of sports.2” OneTeam Collective, the third partner responsible for putting on this event, is an organization “designed to accelerate growth for companies seeking to align with the sports industry.3

The organizations that attended this meeting ranged from veterans to up-and-coming companies trying to gain a niche in this growing market. In addition to our group from KSI, the following companies and/or organizations were involved in the panel discussions.

Company/Organization Website
Harvard Innovation Lab https://i-lab.harvard.edu/
Sports Innovation Lab https://www.sportsilab.com/
OneTeam Collective http://www.oneteamcollective.com/
Intel http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wearables/wearables-overview.html
Gatorade Sports Science Institute http://www.gssiweb.org/en
ESPN Sports Science http://www.espn.com/espn/sportscience/
US Army http://www.usariem.army.mil/
Harvard Biodesign Lab http://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/
MIT Sports Technology Group https://innovation.mit.edu/
USC Center for Body and Computing https://www.uscbodycomputing.org/
VERT https://www.myvert.com/
NIX http://nixbiosensors.com/
MC10 https://www.mc10inc.com/
Humon https://humon.io/
Halo Neuroscience https://www.haloneuro.com/
Rabil Companies http://endurancecos.com/meet-the-team/paul-rabil/
STRIVR Labs http://strivrlabs.com/
WHOOP http://whoop.com/
Zebra Technologies https://www.zebra.com/us/en/solutions/location-solutions/zebra-sport-solution.html
STATS https://www.stats.com/

 

 

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Dr. Casa during the “4th Quarter” Panel Discussion

Dr. Douglas Casa served on the third panel titled: “Software Changing the Role of Coaches and the Analysis of Athletic Performance” where he was able to discuss the importance of research in development of wearable technologies and how KSI has been involved in that research world. He suggested that every company entering this market should reach out to a third-party research group to validate their device in a peer-reviewed fashion. This type of validation will provide the company and the consumer confidence that their product works.

 

To wrap up the symposium, the following big names in sports discussed their experience with technology:

Matt Hasselbeck IMG_0393(NFL, ESPN), Ryan Fitzpatrick (NY Jets), Sean Sansiveri (NFLPA), Dr. Leslie Saxon (USC Center for Body Computing), Meghan Duggan (United States Olympic Committee), Paul Rabil (MLL and US Lacrosse), Zak DeOssie (NY Giants), Shawn Springs (NFL), andCraig Adams (NHL).

 

Overall, this symposium was an awesome start to a much larger, much needed conversation. It seemed that the general consensus with most attendees was that all of the technology and data we are now able to gather is phenomenal. Moving forward, we must all continue to strive to validate every measurement tool, make sense of all of the data these tools are collecting, and determine best practices for using this analysis to make meaningful differences in performance. This is an exciting time to be in this field, in its infancy, when the potential for growth is limitless.

 

 

  1. Harvard i-lab. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2017, from https://i-lab.harvard.edu/
  2. Sports Innovation Lab (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2017, from https://www.sportsilab.com/
  3. OneTeam Collective. Retrieved February 23, 2017, from https://www.nflpa.com/oneteamcollective

 

Study: Private schools offer fewer athletic training services than public schools (USA Today)

A new study has revealed that there is a greater percentage of public secondary schools than private schools in the United States offering athletic training services.

The results of the study published in the Journal of Athletic Training state that while 37 percent of public secondary schools have a full-time athletic trainer to meet the healthcare needs of student-athletes, only 28 percent of private secondary schools do.

According to the research, only 58 percent of private secondary schools provide some amount of athletic training services, compared to 70 percent for public schools.

“Despite the documented benefits of having an AT on site for both practices and games, many schools, public and private, do not provide this critical medical service to their students,” writes lead author Alicia Pike, MS, ATC, the associate director of research at the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut.

For the study, researchers from the Korey Stringer Institute in the Department of Kinesiology at UConn conducted the survey that was funded in part by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. School athletic directors (or principals, if no athletic director was employed) from 8,509 public secondary schools and 2,044 private schools responded by phone or email. The data was collected from September 2011 to June 2014.

Despite the differences in athletic training services, though, both settings provided a similar number of student-athletes with access to medical care. Barriers to hiring trainers were seen as comparable between public and private secondary schools.

For more on the study, you can read the study from the scientific publication of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association scientific here.

Source: USA Today

Why Exercise Science Matters

By: Gabrielle Giersch M.S., Assistant Director of Education, Korey Stringer Institute

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I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Connecticut in the field of exercise science. I received my Bachelor of Science Degree in Exercise Science from Roanoke College, a small liberal arts college in Virginia, and my Master’s Degree in Exercise Physiology from James Madison University. This educational background leads me to the first edition for this educational editorial series from the Korey Stringer Institute: Why Exercise Science Matters. Exercise science is a largely growing academic subject area and department in many universities. But not many people, including students that are in this major, know what to do with an exercise science degree. For many, it’s seen as a precursor for PT or PA school, and the material isn’t always taken very seriously for it’s value. It’s often seen as the in between, something one has to do to get somewhere else, not some place where many students actually want to stay.

 

My hope is that people see that there are so many things you can do with an exercise science degree. For example, technology is evolving to be more adept at measuring physiological variables so everyday people, not just elite athletes or coaches, can monitor their wellness, fitness, stress, sleep, and many other physiological variables. Research is constantly improving to better equip individuals with technology and provide guidance in interpreting the data properly with goals to optimize athletic performance, health, and safety. To achieve that, we analyze detailed data, from the level of microscopic molecules and genetic expressions, in combination with observations from what actually happens in the field, to make informed decisions about human physiology. Exercise science provides practitioners with the ability to directly relate the research back to the human body and its movements. This makes the education of those in exercise science even more important, particularly with regard to evidence and research based education.

 

For this field to advance, it is vital for everyone who is involved in exercise science to have access to evidence and research-based practices, as well as outstanding educational resources. This applies not only to the students, athletic trainers, athletes, team coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, clinical exercise physiologists, physical therapists, professors, and researchers, but, ANYONE who is partaking in physical activity, exercise, or sports. We need to spread the word about exercise science and evidence based knowledge instead of dispelling myths from previous generations (see classical heat stroke vs. exertional heat stroke). Using evidence and research can not only improve performance of elite athletes, it can also help to save lives. The American College of Sports Medicine has a global health initiative called Exercise is Medicine (http://www.exerciseismedicine.org/) which refers to the applicability of exercise and physical activity for all people. Our goal should be to use evidence to broaden our field of expertise and make this field larger and more applicable to our society as a whole. The athletic trainers, the professors, the researchers, the physical therapists, and the exercise scientists already know that it matters. I think it’s time the rest of the world did too!

 

The views represented in this editorial are those of the author and may not reflect the views of the Korey Stringer Institute. Statements made within this editorial should not be construed as official statements from the Korey Stringer Institute.