Safety in sports is an major issue in today’s society. One particular safety concern with all sports is concussions. Each year, the scientific community finds out more about the effects of concussions but it is still not clear as to what all of the long term effects are. As the world’s most popular sport, head injuries occur frequently in soccer. There are so many different ways to get injured in a soccer match, especially with such minimal safety equipment. Throughout  my many years of playing soccer, I have acquired three concussions on the field. These injuries have kept me out of competing in sports and have kept me out of school for extended periods of time. Something has to be done about the concussion epidemic associated with soccer. I did not play organized football growing up, so I do not have any personal experience with head trauma caused during a football game. Football does have the highest percentage of athletes enduring head injuries, and there is clearly something to be done to decrease the number of these injuries.

One study that I find particularly disturbing revealed that 63% of varsity soccer players had symptoms of a concussion at some point, yet only 19% were aware of their symptoms. Another study hypothesized that previous concussions increase an athletes vulnerability to repetitive blows to the head leading to brain damage. To complete this study, Penn State collegiate football and rugby players were selected to be the subjects for this study. Twelve football and rugby players were selected for this study, six with a history of concussions and six without a history of concussions. The subjects were put through a serious of Virtual Reality tests and MRI scans to check the subjects before and after their competitions to see their brain productivity.

The results showed that brain productivity, balance, and spatial memory deficiency after the subjects competition. Although these athletes often do not realize the impact of repetitive knocks to the head, there is immediate and long term effects from these sports. Athletes continue to compete in their sport while having concussion like symptoms putting themselves at a high risk of serious injury.

I believe that the best solution to this problem is to have the coaches, referees, and trainers aware of the symptoms of concussions to protect the athletes as best as possible. It would be unfair to completely eliminate sports that have constant knocks to the head, therefore, awareness is the best solution to contain this issue.

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/47/5/e1.12.abstract

http://consumer.healthday.com/cognitive-health-information-26/brain-health-news-80/heading-soccer-ball-can-damage-brain-study-says-684615.html