CONTACT SPORTS

Contact sports are sports that emphasize or require physical contact between
players. Some sports, such as mixed martial arts, are scored on impacting an
opponent, while others, including rugby, require tackling of players. These
sports are often known as full-contact, as the sport cannot be undertaken
without contact. Other sports have contact, but such events are illegal under the
rules of the game or are accidental and do not form part of the sport.
The contact in contact sports can also include impact via a piece of sporting
equipment, such as being struck by a hockey stick or football. Non-contact
sports are those where participants should have no possible means of touching,
such as sprinting, swimming, darts or snooker, where players use separate lanes
or take turns of play. Consideration should also be given to other sports such as
Moto-cross and Bicycle Moto-cross (BMX) and cycling which all involve
riding/racing in packs of riders. This often results in brushing and bumping off
other riders.
Many sports will penalize contact with rules for certain situations or instances
to help reduce the incidence of physical trauma or litigation for assault or
grievous bodily harm[citation needed]. Many sports involve a degree of player-
to-player or player-to-object contact. The term "contact sport" is used in both
team sports and combat activities, medical terminology and television game
shows, such as American Gladiators and Wipeout , to certain degrees. Contact
between players is often classed by different grades ranging from non-contact,
where there is no contact between players, to full-contact or collision sports,
where the rules allow for significant physical contact.
Injuries in some contact sports have been fatal. Injury rates in professional
rugby league are higher than in some other contact sports.
Most contact sports require any male players to wear a Abdominal Guard to
protect their male genitalia.
The cost of equipment can be an obstacle to participating in many sports.
A (full) contact sport is any sport for which significant physical impact force on
players, either deliberate or incidental, is allowed or within the rules of the
game.
Contact actions include tackling, blocking, sliding tackle (association football)
and a whole range of other moves that can differ substantially in their rules and
degree of application.
Examples of contact sports are roller derby, association football, slamball,
rugby league, rugby union, American football, Canadian football, water polo,
lacrosse, kabaddi, hurling, Quidditch, shinty[3], Australian rules football, ice
hockey, wheelchair rugby and Gaelic football.
Full-contact martial arts include wrestling, Sanshou, sumo, boxing, mixed
martial arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, judo, various forms of full contact
karate, and some forms of Taekwondo.
A semi-contact sport is typically a combat sport involving striking and
containing physical contact between the combatants simulating full-power
techniques. The techniques are restricted to limited power, and rendering the
opponent unconscious is forbidden.
Some semi-contact sports use a point system to determine the winner and use
extensive protective gear to protect the athletes from injury. Examples of semi-
contact sports include karate, kalaripayattu, kickboxing, various Korean martial
arts that incorporate contact rules sparring, kendo and taekwondo
Another indicator of a semi-contact martial arts competition system is that after
a point is rewarded the adversaries will be separated and resume the match from
safe distance, but often it is possible to argue if some martial arts sports belong
in one contact group or another.
Limited-contact sports are sports for which the rules are specifically designed to
prevent contact between players either intentionally or unintentionally. Contact
can still happen, but penalties are often used to disallow substantial contact
between players. These penalties, including physically removing players from
the field of play, mean that contact is moderate or rare.
Examples include basketball, volleyball, baseball, handball, softball, field
hockey, women's lacrosse, netball, korfball, Floorball, walking football,
Squash, polo, ultimate, bandy, dodgeball and underwater hockey.
Reducing the injury rates in football and other male contact sports to those of
non-contact sports like tennis or baseball would result in 49,600 fewer injuries
per year in colleges and 601,900 injuries per year in high school, according to
a new study by Yale economist Ray C. Fair.

Fair, who co-authored the study with Yale undergraduate Christopher Champa,
found that barring contact in football and other contact sports would generate
savings of between $446 million and $1.5 billion per year in colleges, and up to
$19.2 billion in high schools. Football accounted for slightly more than half of
the college savings and more than 70% of savings in high school sports.

“Banning contact in high school and college sports would vastly reduce injuries
and create substantial savings in lowered medical costs and lost productivity,”
said Fair, the John M. Musser Professor of Economics at Yale. “Admittedly,
making football a non-contact sport would be a dramatic and highly controversial
change in American sports culture. Our analysis is intended to provide policy
makers cost estimates that they can weigh against the benefits of contact sports
when considering what to do about contact.”

The researchers examined injury data covering the 2009-2010 academic year
through the 2013-2014 academic year from the NCAA Injury Surveillance
Program, which is compiled by the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research
and Prevention, and the High School Reporting Information Online project. The
data were taken from a sample of reporting colleges and high schools and
expanded to national totals.

For colleges, the researchers analyzed the contact sports football, wrestling,
soccer, basketball, and lacrosse against the non-contact sports tennis, baseball,
indoor track, outdoor track, and cross country. For high schools, they compared
injury rates in football, soccer, basketball, and wrestling to baseball. (Basketball
is technically a non-contact sport, but its injury rates are similar to contact
sports.)
The researchers analyzed four kinds of injuries in college sports: concussions,
bone injuries, ligament/cartilage sprains and tears, and muscle injuries. The
injury rates for the contact sports were substantial higher. For example, there
were 7.79 injuries per 1,000 exposures in college football, compared to 3.17
injuries per 1,000 exposures in college baseball and 1.75 injuries per 1,000
exposures in outdoor track.

In high schools, there were 3.73 injuries per 1,000 exposures in football,
compared to 0.90 injuries per 1,000 exposures in baseball.

The researchers also found that the concussion rate in college football was 15
times higher than in non-contact college sports. It was 10 times higher in high
school. Reducing concussions to the level of those in non-contact sports would
result in 6,900 fewer concussions per year in college and 161,400 fewer in high
school, according to the study. Scientific research has linked playing tackle
football to cognitive problems and neurodegenerative diseases, such as chronic
traumatic encephalopathy.

The study’s savings estimates underestimate the total cost of contact sports
because they cover short-term costs but do not account for possible long-term
health and cognitive problems from having played football and other contact
sports, Fair said, adding that their data do not allow for long-term estimates.

“Many institutions are reluctant to release data on sports injuries,” he said.

“We’re working to get universities to collect and make public more injury data so
that people can make more informed decisions about whether to participate in
contact sports. Data on women would be particularly helpful. This study is a step
in that effort.”

Fair and Champa, a Yale senior majoring in economics, provide suggestions for
lowering injury rates in contact sports to those in non-contact sports. They
suggest that a ban on contact, as well as heading in soccer, and tighter refereeing
could possibly reduce injury rates of ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse to non-
contact levels. Football would have to transform into a non-contact version of the
game, such as flag football, they suggest.

“Do I love hockey more than I love my child?”

This is the question Bennet Omalu, a neurologist and forensic
pathologist, asked in his book Truth Doesn’t Have a Side. Omalu is famous for
publishing groundbreaking research documenting the damaging effects of
football on professional athletes in America. His research changed the way we
think about contact sports. In his opinion, no person under the age of 18 should
participate in contact sports. The risk, in his mind, is simply too great.
There is no denying that there are risks associated with participating in contact
sports. Recently, a Texas NBC affiliate published quotes from doctors warning
against preventable injuries caused by sports. Their specific worries concerned
overuse injuries (injuries caused by too much stress on a certain body part).
The risk of traumatic brain injury is also gaining national attention.
Participating in competitive sports puts young athletes at a high risk
of sustaining at least one concussion in their lifetime, according to research
published by JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association in
2017. Of the survey’s 13,088 adolescent responders, 14 percent reported
sustaining at least one concussion. When responders also reported participating
in competitive sports, that number increased.
This isn’t surprising, considering that sports accounted for roughly half of all
concussions in adolescents, according to a 2013 report published in JAMA.
The real concern about concussions pertains to the risks that come with
repeated or compounding concussions. One study performed pre-season
cognitive testing on high school adolescents, examining for symptoms of
impairment and asking students to self-report concussions. The adolescents who
reported more than one concussion were more likely to exhibit cognitive, sleep,
and physical symptoms. The symptoms for students reporting three or more
concussions were more likely to be significantly more severe.
One of the first things to know is that some contact sports simply aren’t worth
the risk; McLaughlin doesn’t believe there is any reason for adolescents to be
involved in boxing or mixed martial arts. In these sports, hitting someone in the
head is part of the strategy.
“A concussion is an impact to the head or spine where the force is absorbed by
the brain,” Kroner explains. “Some amount of brain dysfunction occurs.
Because it can affect any part of the brain, the symptoms are extremely
variable, and we’re not sure why everyone has a slightly different experience.”
Concussions are most common in boxing, football, hockey, soccer and lacrosse.
In soccer and basketball, female athletes have higher rates of concussion than
males.
However, the frequency of serious traumatic injuries especially in high school
football combined with the increasingly scary reports on post-concussive brain
injury — chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — in football players after
they retire is changing my opinion on contact sports in children or even adults.
Last week, researchers at Boston University revealed Aaron Hernandez suffered
the most severe case of CTE ever discovered in a person his age, damage that
would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment, and cognition.
About a million high school boys play organized football in the United States.
Another 500,000 or so play other almost equally violent sports including lacrosse,
hockey, wrestling, and soccer.
Should contact sports be made non-contact, or even banned outright, in
youth leagues, middle schools, and high schools to protect young athletes?
Contact in sports causes an estimated 600,000 injuries a year to U.S. male
high school athletes.

You wouldn’t let your child drink a glass of cognac or smoke a cigarette, so
why would you send him out on a football field to risk brain damage?

It’s a question Dr. Bennet Omalu — a forensic pathologist whose discovery of

chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was portrayed in the Will Smith film
“Concussion” — wants parents to consider as students head back to school.

He warns that children who play football, hockey and lacrosse could face a
lifetime of health consequences and details his findings in his book, “Truth
Doesn't Have a Side: My Alarming Discovery about the Danger of Contact
Sports.”

“We need to develop more brain-friendly, healthier types of sports,” Omalu told
TODAY. “We have elevated sports to the level of a religion. We’re in denial of
the truth.”

Which sports are safe for kids?

Omalu: The non-contact sports: swimming, track and field, volleyball,

basketball, table tennis, lawn tennis, badminton — there are so many of them.
There is still a risk of accidental injury. You have to play safe.

CHILD ABUSE

The fundamental definition of child abuse is the intentional exposure of a child

to the risk of injury. That injury does not have to occur.

We wouldn’t give a child a cigarette to smoke because a cigarette is potentially

harmful. But we would put on a helmet on the head of a child and send him out
on a field to play a game whereby he sustains repeated blows to his head, to
suffer sub-concussions and concussions.
Many papers have shown that all it takes for your child to suffer brain
damage is just one concussion. But before your son suffers a concussion, there
must have been hundreds if not thousands of sub-concussions. The damage is
permanent because the brain does not have any ability to regenerate itself.
Should rugby tackling be banned in schools? Two experts from Newcastle
university think so.

Professor Allyson Pollock and Graham Kirkwood are asking the UK's chief
medical officers (CMOs) to protect children from injuries by removing this
contact from the game.

They believe there is evidence to suggest that banning tackling could reduce the
number of concussions, and head and neck injuries.

But World Rugby, which governs the sport, says this is "simply not supported
by the data".
'For' banning tackling
Prof Pollock's report suggests there is evidence that banning tackling would
reduce concussions, and head and neck injuries.

She outlined that rugby had the highest concussion rates for children, when
compared to sports like ice hockey or American football - both of which
involve physical contact too.
Her report also highlighted a potential link between head injuries and an
increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease later in life, saying it is the
government's duty to "protect children from risks of injury and to ensure safety
of children".
It isn't the first time that Prof Pollock has called on the authorities to address the
issue of head injuries in the sport. In a report for the British Medical Journal in
2014, she talked about how serious injuries can also happen in rugby scrums.
It is not just rugby at schools that is affected by a debate around concussion.
People have spoken out about concussion in rugby at a professional level too.
The average age of death among all players studied was 66. There were 18
suicides among the 177 diagnosed.
“We’re not saying that this is happening to a lot of women. But we’ve identified
a problem that has very poor awareness. Girls are not reporting [their injuries],
and therefore we are managing it very poorly,” Dr McGhee says.
The highest rates of injury occur in sports that involve contact and collisions.
Football. Almost 215,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital
emergency rooms for football-related injuries.
Ice hockey. More than 20,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital
emergency rooms for ice hockey-related injuries.
Soccer. About 88,000 children ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency
rooms for soccer-related injuries.

 More than 3.5 million children ages 14 and younger get hurt annually
playing sports or participating in recreational activities.
 Although death from a sports injury is rare, the leading cause of death from a
sports-related injury is a brain injury.
 Sports and recreational activities contribute to approximately 21 percent of
all traumatic brain injuries among American children.
 Almost 50 percent of head injuries sustained in sports or recreational
activities occur during bicycling, skateboarding, or skating incidents.
 More than 775,000 children, ages 14 and younger, are treated in hospital
emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. Most of the injuries
occurred as a result of falls, being struck by an object, collisions, and
overexertion during unorganized or informal sports activities.

Tips for Preventing Sports Injuries

Whether you are an amateur or a professional athlete, the following tips can
help reduce your chance of sustaining a serious sports injury:
 Get a pre-season physical to check for any health issues prior to training.
 Increase your flexibility by performing a dynamic warm-up prior to practice
and competition followed by static stretching post activity.
 Consult with a coach or physical therapist about how to incorporate
appropriate strength and conditioning training into your practice schedule.
 Wear protective equipment (i.e. mouth guards, helmets, heart guards, pads,
eye wear) as well as gear that is properly fitted.
 Maintain use of proper technique while training and competing.
 Stay active during the off-season so that you are prepared to return to your
regular training regimen later in the year.
 Stayed hydrated to avoid fatigue, muscle cramps, dizziness and other
symptoms.
 Take periodic breaks during practice and plan to take at least one day off
each week to rest and recover.
 Pause your activity if you feel pain and discuss it with a doctor, physical
therapist or athletic trainer.

Contact sports responsible for nearly half of kids’ traumatic brain

injuries: study

Atlanta — Almost half of the 283,000 pediatric sports- or recreation-related

traumatic brain injuries treated each year in U.S. emergency rooms are
caused by contact sports, according to a recent study from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers analyzed 2010-2016 data from the National Electronic Injury

Surveillance System-All Injury Program, which included an estimated 2
million ER visits by children who suffered TBIs, including concussions,
while participating in a sport or recreational activity.

TBIs sustained in contact sports made up about 45% of the ER visits. Boys
playing contact sports accounted for an annual average of 99,784 ED visits –
more than twice as many noncontact sports-related visits (44,848).
Other key findings:

Football, cycling, basketball, soccer and playground activities were linked to

the most TBI-related ER visits.
Boys and children between the ages of 10 and 17 had the highest TBI rates.
For girls, the most common TBI-related ER visits were attributed to limited
contact sports such as cheerleading, gymnastics or diving (27,343), slightly
higher than contact sports (27,180).
TBI cases among boys dropped to 482.7 ER visits per 100,000 children in
2016 from 559.1 in 2012. The researchers speculate that the drop may be
linked to prevention efforts such as safety-focused rule changes in contact
sports, along with changes in care-seeking behaviors and reduced
participation in contact sports.

TBI-related ER visits among girls, meanwhile, increased over the study

period, climbing to 254.3 per 100,000 children from 216.5.

A TBI can be caused by impact to the head or body and result in emotional,
physiological and cognitive issues. To help reduce the risk, the researchers
suggest limiting player-to-player contact and changing rules to reduce
collisions in youth sports. If a TBI does occur, effective diagnosis and
management can promote positive health outcomes.

The study was published online March 15 in the CDC’s Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report.