Why Concussions from Soccer Are Worse for Children
Soccer is largely considered to be a no-contact sport and many parents are drawn to that fact when they encourage or allow their children to play. Increasingly, however, soccer studies are giving parents of soccer players bad news: playing soccer can do serious brain damage to young players. The worse news is that such brain damage can often affect children in more severe ways. According to reports, concussions from playing youth soccer are “soaring,”1 and parents should be concerned that their child is safe while playing this sport.
Risks on the Soccer Field
Traumatic brain injuries (or TBIs) can be sustained while playing soccer one of two ways:
Heading, which is the move soccer players use to hit the ball with their head. A standard soccer ball weighs one pound and can be traveling very fast when a player uses this move.
Head-to-head collision between players on the field. These can be frequent, especially among younger players.
Over the last few years, soccer players have been showing2 the same type of brain injuries that football players are known to sustain. For example, the autopsies of two soccer players revealed that both had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or CTE), which results from repeated concussions and TBIs.
In 2014, one study3 showed that 76 out of 79 deceased professional football players had CTE. If you recall, players and their families were recently paid millions of dollars for compensation by the NFL for brain injuries the players sustained during their football careers.
Soccer players show cortical thinning in their brains, which is linked to cognitive decline. Soccer players tend to perform worse on mental tests as they age. This has lead researchers to think that heading is a series of mini-concussion episodes.
Risks for Children and Youths
Soccer is growing in popularity in the United States. In 2014, there was more than 3 million registered youth soccer player, which is almost twice the amount as in 1990. It is understood that a child’s brain is 1/8 as strong as an adult’s brain, so it is no wonder that TBIs can create serious injury.
TBIs are extremely dangerous for children, although they are not uncommon. According to the Brain Injury Association of America,4 each year babies and children ages 0-14 will sustain TBIs that will result in:
- 2,685 deaths
- 37,000 hospitalizations
- 435,000 emergency department visits
The complications of TBIs are greater in children because their brains are still developing and it is also more difficult to measure the extent of complications in children.
Contact a Tampa Bay Brain Injury Attorney
If you are concerned that your child might have a TBI from sports or another cause, you may be entitled to compensation if someone else was negligent in your child’s injuries. A skilled attorney at the Dolman Law Group will meet with you for free and evaluate your case.
If you have a valid case, it is imperative that you speak to a lawyer before accepting a settlement offer, even if the offer sounds fair. Most people undervalue how much their case is worth because they do not understand all of the types of damage awards available nor do they have the expertise to estimate future damages.
Contact Dolman Law Group at 727-451-6900 today.
Dolman Law Group
800 North Belcher Road
Clearwater, FL 33765
727-451-6900
https://www.dolmanlaw.com/legal-services/brain-injury-attorneys/
1http://www.cbsnews.com/news/youth-soccer-injuries-soaring-including-concussions-heres-why/
2http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11682-015-9442-0
3http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/76-of-79-deceased-nfl-players-found-to-have-brain-disease/
