Douglas J. Casa, PhD
Douglas J. Casa, PhD, chief operating officer of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education in Storrs, Connecticut. The NATA guidelines were published in Journal of Athletic Training.
In the last 12 years, a startling 21 football players in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) died during conditioning workouts. For 11 of these young men, death occurred at the very beginning of training, on the first or second day.
“Though the overwhelming majority of conditioning-related deaths since 2000 among college athletes were among football players, a few conditioning-related deaths have occurred among college athletes who played other sports, too,” I learned recently from Douglas J. Casa, PhD, chief operating officer of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education in Storrs, Connecticut. He is the chair of the task force of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, which has written the first-ever guidelines attempting to change business as usual when it comes to how conditioning programs are conducted at colleges. The goal is to make students’ health and safety a higher priority.
If you’re a parent of a college athlete—or even a high school athlete, because these problems affect athletes at that level, too—then you’ll want to pay special attention to the new recommendations.
The deaths of those NCAA players mentioned earlier were primarily the result of one of three conditions—sickle cell trait, an underlying genetic condition that is benign unless excessive exercise causes blocked oxygen flow to vital organs…an underlying genetic heart defect, which can lead to sudden death when excessive exercise pushes the heart into overdrive…or heatstroke, which can happen to any healthy person who exerts himself/herself excessively.
Dr. Casa told me that many coaches and athletes on the collegiate level (and even some on the high school level) are pushed too hard by the expectation to succeed—no matter what the cost. If athletes are out of shape early in the season and if they’re exercising in the late summer heat, that surely doesn’t help matters. The intent of the guidelines is to get coaches to focus more on health and safety.
There are a total of 10 guidelines. For a full list, click here. In the meantime, Dr. Casa highlighted the most important ones…
Unfortunately, the guidelines are not mandates but recommendations. But the more you raise awareness about them, the safer your child is likely to be. Here’s how Dr. Casa suggests raising awareness…