New football program
will focus on safety techniques
The Aroostook Huskies Football Club has been selected by USA Football to be one of the few programs across the United States to participate in its pilot project to attempt to implement better and safer techniques for playing football.
Recognizing that safety is a major concern for players at all levels, the National Football League and USA Football (the national governing body for amateur football in America) have proactively invested considerable time and money in studying the problem of how to preserve the game of football so popular in this country while taking steps to make the game safer for participants. The Head’s Up program is the result of this effort and a first step in this direction.
The Head’s Up program emphasizes three major components: proper equipment fitting, concussion recognition and teaching better, safer tackling techniques that largely take the head and neck out of the collision.
Huskies head coach Stu Wyckoff of Presque Isle, was sent to a Boston clinic to learn new best practices to bring back to the program and implement. This means that all Aroostook Huskies coaches will incorporate these techniques and all Huskies players will be taught and drilled extensively in the same techniques.
In addition, parents will be presented information in an attempt to enlist their aid in monitoring their children (particularly when it comes to maintaining the integrity of the safety equipment and in recognizing changes in their children that might suggest the presence of concussion).
“It is clear that football needs to evolve if it is going to survive as a game. Players have just gotten so much bigger and stronger and the collisions are so much more violent. I was glad to see that USA Football was as concerned about safety as we are,” Wyckoff said. “The program presented provided scientific evidence to support the claim that these are ‘best practices.’
“I just think that any coach who ignores the evidence is not doing his players any favors. We are going to immediately begin to implement what I learned so our kids are as protected as possible. Hopefully parents who are on the fence about letting their kids play football will be interested in this program and what we are doing,” Wyckoff added.
While nothing can totally eliminate the risk of injury is this very physical sport, it is clear that things can and should be done to reduce the risk of serious injury as much as possible. Most kids playing football at the youth and high school level will not go on to play in college or professionally and will earn their livings other ways. It is imperative that coaches do what they can to preserve those realistic future options for their players.
Anyone who has questions regarding the Head’s Up program can visit the Aroostook Huskies’ website at www.aroostookfootball.org and select the “Contact Us” link on the homepage.
