THE HITS THAT ARE CHANGING THE GAME…AND THE HITS NO ONE IS NOTICING

By: Arianna Alvero

Brain Traumatic Injuries do NOT discriminate in race or age. Roughly 3 million youth athletes play football, and an estimated 1.1 million of them end up with a sports related concussion. What researchers call “subconcussive events” are repeated hits to the head that don’t result in concussions, but add up to cause long term brain damage, memory loss, and depression. For children, these concerns should be amplified because a young athlete’s brain is still developing during the effects of a concussion.  Even many smaller hits over a season, can be far more detrimental, compared to the head injury of an older player. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is the term for brain damage that occurs after repeated blunt impact. Angela Chen (2017) examined the brains of 202 former football players to see if they showed the physiological signs of CTE and discovered that 99% of the donated brains of NFL players had signs of the disease. CTE was discovered in 2002 by Dr. Bennet Omalu. It has been 16 years since that important discovered and there is still no cure for this disease. Until then how many more fatalities must occur until we can better prevent these serious injuries?