Jan. 5, 2022 — A chilling parallel

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In a 3rd of a century of masking area hockey and women’ and ladies’s lacrosse, I’ve been fortunate to haven’t seen any of those well-conditioned athletes die on the pitch, though loads of hazards abound. Younger individuals are tempted with medicine and alcohol, and are confronted by vehicles and by invaders with weapons.

Once I first began this web site, a participant from one of many groups in my protection space was driving in a automobile alongside a type of winding roads within the again nation, solely to be killed in an accident. I’d later be taught that was the best worry of lots of the coaches in my space: gamers of fall sports activities who had been put answerable for vehicles, or who would endure despair from the shortening of daylight.

This previous week, within the wake of the Damar Hamlin scenario, Western Mass Information interviewed a legendary area hockey coach who went by an ordeal in late 2007. Sherry Webb, who coached at Hatfield Smith Academy (Mass.) for 37 years, recounted a time when one in all her student-athletes, Bethany McMeniman, suffered cardiac arrest throughout a late-season follow.

Once you view the footage within the above hyperlink, the feelings from 2007 nonetheless stay. It has to. You don’t, as a coach, anticipate to have one in all your gamers die in the course of an occasion you’re answerable for at a college.

Webb would coach at Smith solely three extra years, shifting to an assistant teaching place at Mount Holyoke Faculty in 2011, the place she has remained ever since.

Given what I learn about concussions, commodio cordis, and different accidents involving stick-and-ball video games, it’s really outstanding that we’ve got not had a demise on the sphere in a area hockey or lacrosse recreation within the final 33 years of my profession masking these two sports activities.

Thoughts you, we’ve had some conditions that we’ve realized about concerning a number of head accidents on the a part of goalies. I particularly cringe after I see area hockey goalies who lie down or “log” for penalty corners and let the ball hit them on the helmet. It’s my hope that the following technology of area hockey headgear is ready to be engineered to dampen blows from a tough ball touring 80 miles an hour, or, for that matter, blows from sticks going for rebounds in shut.

There are, sadly, tragic outcomes which might occur within the video games younger ladies play. And the regrettable factor is that the imposition of eyewear and headwear masks the dangers. There are extra mortal dangers from the ball hitting a participant within the chest throughout a susceptible level within the coronary heart cycle.

Which, as we noticed final Monday, no kind of padding goes to forestall.

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