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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

What are your thoughts about funding athletic programs given the research about injuries?

9 comments:

  1. I think kids should play sports, they don't have the opportunity to run around the neighborhoods like we did as kids.

    I think following the appropriate measures for safety regarding football helmets etc, I think in now way should we pull any funding from our athletic programs in Portsmouth, my cousin Chris McGuirk was the old PHS Lacrosse coach, and I attended lots of games, attending games and watching practices are a way to bring our community together.

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  2. I think we should continue to fund athletic programs but stay on top of safety issues. I applaud the School Board's work to learn more about preventing head injuries and ensure that all precautions are being taken, including informing parents and students about risks and making sure that safety comes first. The School Board is continuing their efforts to learn more from medical experts. Some types of injuries will be inevitable, e.g., dislocations and breaks, but the recreation and school athletic departments need to plan ways to avoid serious injuries.

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  3. Athletics must always be a part of our youths lives for all the benefits it renders. I see no reason to not fund athletics but as the science of injuries evolves we will have to adjust athletic programs to assure the safety of our children

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  4. We need to continue to support athletic programs for all students. Also, coaches should receive training in first aid and injuries with an emphasis on physical fitness and healthy living. With the high incidence of childhood obesity, sports play an important part of the lives of students, Sports build social skills, competition and individual skill building.

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  5. Portsmouth has great athletic teams. We are a sedentary culture and we need to encourage our students to have an active lifestyle. Students who are lead by excellent coaches become better rounded people and often become volunteers in our communities.

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  6. Jim Splaine

    Sports programs deserve funding for a variety of reasons. They are valuable for character-building, learning leadership skills, and providing interaction between our young residents, parents, and coaches.
    Our athletic programs should, however, always be designed around known research about injuries, so that all participants are protected as much as possible. While risk in inherent in whatever we do, being aware of those risks and being preventative as much as possible is important for all who participate.

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  7. I believe athletics should be funded. I do believe that we as a society have to take head injuries very seriously. We must follow the research. In the end we must do what is right for the long term of a person’s life.

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  8. Portsmouth has a rich tradition of both academic and athletic excellence and I believe it's good for the city to support strong athletic programs in our schools. The School Board has done a great job with educating athletes and coaches about the seriousness of concussions and this work should continue and be expanded because our first priority must be to keep our athletes safe and healthy.

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  9. Injuries are a simple fact of life in competitive sports, and I don’t see that any of the recent research about injuries has told us much more than we already knew. I played football and wrestled on the varsity teams in high school, and although I was a bit too small to amount to much as a football player at the college level I continued to wrestle in college and lettered in that sport at Cornell University. Over the years that I was involved in competitive sports, my injuries consisted of, among other things, a broken wrist, a partially-separated shoulder, two cracked ribs, a third cracked rib arising out of a separate injury, an elbow to the cheekbone which gave me double vision for awhile, a laceration to the eyebrow which required stitches, and numerous sprained ankles.

    I was briefly knocked unconscious, or at least stunned, during a high school football scrimmage when I upended the ball carrier while making a tackle, separating him from the football and causing a fumble. At least, that’s what I was told afterward; I didn’t see it. The last thing I remember was plowing my head into his midsection. The blow did not escape the notice of my football coach, however. He had the presence of mind to inquire further, and he asked me, “Duncan, what’s your telephone number?” When I wasn’t able to remember my own phone number, he took me out of the scrimmage.

    When I was in the 7th grade, my high school’s quarterback died as a result of a head injury that he had received in a football game, and so the subject of head injuries naturally received plenty attention thereafter. My high school’s immediate response was to outfit all of our football teams (varsity, JV, and freshman) with state-of-the-art football helmets, which were considered to be the safest available at the time. My uncle was a radiologist, who x-rayed many of the local high school football players whenever they sustained serious injuries, and he had a different perspective. For years, he told both my father and myself that if I were his son, he wouldn’t even consider letting me play Pop Warner or high school football, and indeed my father followed his advice for a long time. He refused to allow me to play football until I was a high school freshman, despite plenty of moaning, whining, complaining, and cajoling on my part, and even then he did so only reluctantly.

    The bottom line is this: Competitive sports were obviously important to me (and they still are, though only as an onlooker these days and not as a participant), and I am well aware of their importance to the student athletes. I have abundant knowledge, awareness, and firsthand experience with sports injuries, and on balance I feel that participation in organized sports is well worth the risk of injury, particularly when whose activities are properly supervised by responsible coaches and other faculty. Everything we do in life has an element of risk to it. Indeed, we take a risk every time we get into a car and drive it down the street. The only way to avoid all risk is to refrain from getting out of bed in the morning and to stay in bed all day.

    To answer the question directly, I would fully fund the athletic programs, despite the risk of injury.

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