I am in favor of youth and interscholastic athletes participating in as many sports as possible. Why? The odds of any HS athlete recieving a full or partial athletic scholarship is small plus knowing a variety of sports builds the base for having choices for healthy activity as a young adult.

Also, as the following article articulates, better health.



HEADLINE: ONE-SPORT ATHLETES MAY PAY A PRICE;
YEAR-ROUND USE OF SAME MUSCLES LEADS TO INJURIES

BYLINE: By TOM ZIEMER [email protected] 608-252-6174


It came out of nowhere.

There wasn't a defender within 10 feet of Gerich Simon as he ran onto a pass from a soccer teammate on that late summer day in Waupun about two months ago.

"I thought someone tripped me," Simon said.

But there was no slide tackle, no defender crashing into Simon from behind to send him tumbling to the ground.

He had simply tried to plant and drive off his left foot.

"When I went down, I knew what had happened," Simon said. "I knew I was in trouble."

Simon had ruptured his Achilles' tendon, ending his prep soccer season just as it had begun. A senior at Poynette High School who played on the school's cooperative team with Portage, he had stopped playing other sports to focus on soccer after his sophomore year, joining Madison FC, an East Side club.

Unfortunately, many young athletes who follow that path can relate. Local doctors say playing the same sport month after month stresses the same body parts, which makes them more susceptible to injuries.

And with the lure of college scholarships and the rise of club sports - allowing young athletes to compete in the same sport nearly year-round - these overuse injuries are on the rise, said Dr. Greg Landry, a professor of pediatrics and sports medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

"They're doing the same activity, which is more prone to getting the body parts overused," Landry said.

Now, Simon's injury might not have occurred because his Achilles' was overworked. He'd never had problems with it, and he said his doctors weren't sure what caused his injury.

But Dr. Alison Brooks, an assistant professor in the orthopedics department at the UW medical school, said muscle and tendon ailments - such as tendinitis in the Achilles' - are some of the more prevalent overuse injuries she sees.

"Something that I routinely ask about in visits with those kids is are they playing other, different sports? How many soccer teams are they playing on at one time? Do they ever take any time off from sports?" said Brooks, who listed soccer, volleyball and gymnastics as sports that produce the most overuse injuries.

"And usually the answer to all that is, playing on multiple teams at one time, maybe not even playing other sports and no time off. I'd say that's a pretty classic case."

Opportunity lost

The Aug. 29 match against Green Bay NEW Lutheran at a tournament hosted by Waupun Central Wisconsin Christian was the second of the season for Poynette-Portage.

But Simon lost out on more than just a memorable final year of high school soccer.

A prolific-scoring forward who earned second-team, All-Capitol Area Conference honors as a junior, he had been in touch with UW-Milwaukee assistant coach Chris Dadaian. Dadaian was planning on coming to watch Simon play to see if he had potential to make it at the NCAA Division I level.

Playing in college was Simon's motivation for quitting basketball after his freshman year and leaving track and field after his sophomore year to concentrate on soccer.

Dadaian was supposed to see Simon play with his club team last spring, but Simon contracted mononucleosis. This fall was his second chance.

Instead, he underwent surgery a week after the injury and is now wearing a walking boot. He'll soon start physical therapy and is hoping to be able to play again in two to three months.

But UW-Milwaukee has since filled all the spots it had available for next year.

"At first you'd think it would hurt a lot, but it didn't," said Simon, who is still planning to attend UW-Milwaukee and play intramural soccer. "I think I was just too mad."

Body needs variety

Brooks said there's no hard evidence to prove that playing multiple sports leads to fewer injuries. But she added that "if you ask clinicians anecdotally in their experience, yes, that seems to be protective.

"Your body is learning sort of different skills and it's also not pounding on your body in the same way 12 months a year," she said. "So I think it makes sense to all of us that that's sort of the heart of the issue."

And it's not just from a physical standpoint, either.

Brooks believes playing multiple sports is important on emotional, psychological and social levels as well. And making sure kids are enjoying the sports they're playing is crucial.

"It's fun to do something else," she said. "I think the other thing we worry about is the amount of overtraining and psychological burnout we're already seeing in our adolescent athletes because they never get any time off.

"And so by the time they get even to high school sports or maybe even to college sports, they don't want to play anymore. So I think that's as big of a concern, not (only) the physical ramifications, but sort of the psycho-social ramifications."

And when overuse injuries do occur - and Brooks said chronic pain is a major red flag - time off will pay off in the future.

"If you take a break now and you give your body a chance to recover and heal, then you're going to be healthier and happier later," she said. "But if you keep trying to push through pain and injury and never give your body a chance to recover, it's never going to recover. Most people, of course, don't want to hear, 'Part of your treatment is not playing your sport.' "

This story reminded me of how the Michigan St Univ hockey coach created a daily evaluation system to create data to provide back to parents when they called about playing time.

I realize that USC is big time college football but when are these young adult football players going to start to be responsible for their own lives?


http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/football/la-sp-uscparents22-2008oct22,0,5731795,full.story

From the Los Angeles Times


USC FOOTBALL

Pete Carroll's game plan includes dealing with parents
Keeping mom and dad informed is part of the job for USC's football coach, who has learned you can't keep everyone happy.
By Gary Klein

October 22, 2008

The e-mail first appeared on a USC fan-site message board last week, then quickly circulated across the Internet.

"What is being done to ensure that my son is being cared for in a proper manner???"

Dexter Hazelton, father of Trojans receiver Vidal Hazelton, sent a six-paragraph e-mail to Coach Pete Carroll in September criticizing the football team's handling of his son's ankle injury.

Now, the whole world could read it, a situation that pulled back the curtain on a subtle and sometimes sensitive component that Carroll confronts as the leader of one of the nation's most successful football programs:

Dealing with parents.

Communication between parents and coach spans a range of issues, including injuries and academics, but Carroll acknowledges, "They basically call me about playing time."

He does not begrudge them; and most don't seem to begrudge him. "They just want to know what can their son do to be a bigger part of things," Carroll said.

So it goes, even for a coach whose teams have won or shared six consecutive Pacific 10 Conference titles, played in six straight Bowl Championship Series bowl games, won two national titles, and is in position to take a run at a third title-game appearance in five years.

That success was built on stockpiling talent, and none of the five-star recruits who chose USC did so with the intent of riding the Trojans' bench.

Dexter Hazelton, while critical of Carroll, does not blame the coach for the way he recruits or manages playing time.

"He has to do what he has to do for USC's program," he said in an interview. "If I was in his position, I would do the same thing. But I have to do what I have to do as a father, which is looking out for my son's interest."

The e-mail that appeared on the Internet last week is among several Hazelton has sent to Carroll over the years, and it called out the coach and USC's training staff for not providing his son with immediate treatment upon the team's return to Los Angeles after the season opener at Virginia.

"You have to get to a point where you have to be angry enough to say, 'What the hell is going on?' " said Hazelton, a New York resident who added that he did not know how his message to Carroll wound up in cyberspace. "[Carroll] responds to me. I get the call-backs, but that doesn't mean he's actually done anything about it."

The father of running back Allen Bradford is also critical of Carroll. Keith Bradford says he has spoken to the coach only twice in three years -- when Allen was being recruited from Colton High, and during a meeting in Carroll's office last year to discuss his son's role in the tailback rotation.

Bradford says he has attended practices, but Carroll "walks right past me. They tell you parents come first, but I don't see it."

Bradford is especially upset that no member of the coaching staff kept him apprised of test results on his son's injured hip. Allen had an MRI exam two weeks ago and met with a specialist last week before opting to have season-ending surgery that will allow him to seek a medical redshirt.

"I should have heard from the head coach or an assistant coach about what's happening with my son," his father said. "I don't feel like I'm part of the Trojan family. It's not the school per se; it's the coach."

Other parents, Dexter Hazelton said, have privately expressed similar concerns.

"A lot of them are afraid to approach him or say something -- they're afraid their son will get blacklisted," he said. "They think he has control over people in the NFL."

Carroll scoffed at the accusation.

"That's not the case or the truth," said Carroll, who coached the New York Jets and the New England Patriots before coming to USC. "I couldn't be more open or receptive to give and take. I'm way above holding grudges about stuff or whatever, but if that's what they think, I can't do anything about it."

Several parents interviewed for this story praised Carroll for his dealings with them.

Frank Cushing, father of senior linebacker Brian Cushing, says his wife often calls Carroll from their home in New Jersey and, "maybe an hour later or less he calls her back. I was shocked. I figured once they got the kid they forgot about you.

"But they've never let us down and we're 3,000 miles away."

Carroll says he communicates with as many mothers as he does fathers, and he tries to nurture extra communication with the parents of quarterbacks because the position is so demanding and the players are subjected to more public and media scrutiny.

The position group that demands the most attention?

"Receivers," Carroll said. "The nature of the position is one of the most outspoken in all of football."

Some parents have reputations for outspokenness that precede their son's arrival on campus.

Hazelton originally balked at signing his son's letter of intent to USC because he wanted him to go to another school. And before the players transferred to USC from Arkansas, the families of receiver Damian Williams and quarterback Mitch Mustain drew criticism as meddlers when it was reported that they had been among a group of parents who met with Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles about the direction of the football program.

In particular, Mustain's mother, Beck Campbell, drew the ire of some Razorbacks fans.

But Carroll says he judges parents the same way he evaluates players: not by what he hears from others but by what he sees and hears himself.

"For all the talk and everything, we haven't talked that much," the coach said of Campbell, who declined to be interviewed for this story. "I called her a while back . . . I think she's been, and Mitch has been, very clear about what's going on."

Mustain, who went 8-0 as the starting quarterback for Arkansas, lost his job there when the team went to a more run-oriented attack during the 2006 season. At USC, he is currently the backup to Mark Sanchez, but as recently as a few weeks ago had been No. 4 on the depth chart.

Kim Mallory is the mother of another heavily recruited player who has experienced highs and lows during his time at USC. When Stafon Johnson arrived after a celebrated career at L.A.'s Dorsey High, he was at first relegated to the "scout team," a term Mallory wasn't familiar with.

"People were coming up to me and saying, 'What are they doing to him? They get kids like Stafon to these schools and then they forget about them,' " Mallory said. "I started to believe the outside world, so I went out to practice to talk to Coach Carroll and find out."

Carroll took Mallory aside after a workout and explained that her son could improve his situation with more consistent efforts in practice.

"We sat down at the back end of the field and he broke it down for me," Mallory said. "That helped me understand so I could help my son understand what he needed to do."

Cary Harris Sr. also gives Carroll high marks for communication.

Last year, Harris Sr. was concerned that his son, Cary Jr., was struggling through an injury and in danger of losing a starting cornerback spot.

Carroll invited the father out to practice and met with him and the player on the field afterward.

"He spoke to us in a professional way and told us what he needed to do to stay on top of the position," Cary Harris Sr. said. "Basically he said, 'You need to compete.' . . . He was calm, cool, collected and polite. He just let us know this is how he runs his program."

Carroll said he would continue to invite parents to call, e-mail, attend practices and meet with him in person. He said his door would always be open and his phone free for anyone with concerns.

"It's not a big time-consuming part of the job and I don't mind it at all," he said. "I talk to them just like we're sharing this responsibility to help this work out for the kids."

Klein is a Times staff writer.

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