Throughout Virginia, a Fall Tradition Shows Signs of Fading
Football isn't going away, but fears around the game are significant. The concerns are legitimate. When deciding whether to let one's kids play, however, remember the benefits the game offers.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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The nerves, conditioned by years of coaching, still twitch on Friday nights. The heart still speeds up several beats when the national anthem is played. And the single-mindedness coaches and players feel just before kick-off still resonates.
Two years removed from coaching high school football, and the emotions are still there.
In all of high school sports, there is nothing that compares with Friday Night Lights, which will again this week play out in stadiums across the 540.
All the excitement, however, hasn’t staved off a growing movement among some schools to drop what for many is the quintessential high school experience.
Already this year, Auburn High School in Southwest Virginia has cancelled its 2024 season, and Cumberland County has cancelled varsity football.
In the grand sweep of things, it’s a blip. There are more than 300 high schools in Virginia that field varsity football teams. Losing two teams hardly constitutes a crisis.
But there is a trend toward less interest in what is sometimes derisively referred to as a gladiator sport; one popular blogger refers to it as “modern day bullfighting.”
Between 2012 and 2017, the number of students participating in football across Virginia fell by 11%.
The latest numbers from the National Federation of State High School Associations for the 2020-2021 season show less than 22,000 students playing 11-man football.
The reasons for the decline are varied.
At Auburn High School, the blame rests with students increasingly specializing in one sport. Football, basketball, soccer, and volleyball demand year-round training as students with hopes of earning college scholarships feel enormous pressure to specialize. (Researchers tend to argue in favor of multisport athletes; but the rise of travel sports has made the idea less appealing to many athletes.)
At other schools, concerns over CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) have more parents pushing their kids away from contact sports like football, where evidence is growing that repeated blows to the head have long-term consequences on memory and mental health.
Death is another concern. Already this season, a varsity football player in Alabama died after suffering a brain injury in a game on Friday night. It’s a rare, but not unknown, tragedy.
The “Annual Survey of Football Injury Research” recorded a “total of 20 deaths among football players during the 2021 football season … 4 traumatic injury deaths, 13 exertional/medical (indirect) deaths, and 3 non-football/non-exertion related deaths.”
Such numbers demand our attention, and should never be accepted as “part of the game.”
End the Sport?
High school football can be dangerous — even lethal — for athletes. Even one traumatic injury is too many. Whether students should continue to take this risk is a decision that rightly resides with each family.
Parents should be aware, however, that removing football from young athletes will not alleviate the risk of significant injury. Other sports, like basketball and soccer, also carry significant risk of injury.
Then there are the risks associated with simply being young — driving, bicycling, and being exposed to alcohol and drugs. In the case of the latter, even strict laws aren’t enough to keep youths from engaging in such risky behavior.
There are extreme sports, too, like skateboarding and BMX biking, which also know their share of traumatic injuries.
Football, and other contact sports, carry the advantage of being supervised by coaches who have usually received at least a minimal amount of training in how to coach young athletes.
There is no national standard, however, for coaches. The time for implementing national standards is long overdue. Those who resist such moves might change their mind if doing so would help restore faith in football. We don’t know the answer to that question — perhaps it’s time to do the research and find out.
Parents and athletes also need to balance the sport’s risks with its known benefits. Benefits that go well beyond athletes’ playing days.
“According to research gathered by the National Federation of High School Associations,” I wrote two years ago in my book 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches, “high school student-athletes tend to have fewer mental health issues later in life, do better in their work careers, vote more regularly, and volunteer more than students who don’t play interscholastic sports. More interesting, these findings generally apply to students of all socio-economic statuses, races, and family backgrounds.”
The dangers associated with athletics are real, and they should never be downplayed to parents or athletes.
Neither should the benefits of playing high school varsity sports.
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