Great news, everyone! The lacrosse community has taken another step towards replacing football as the contact sport of the future! Okay, I’ll hold my horses. Last week Major League Lacrosse announced that all-stars Kevin Crowley, Tyler Fiorito, Adam Ghitelman, Martin Bowes and 9+ other players have pledged to donate their brains to the Concussion Legacy Foundation (CLF), solidifying the commitment of the MLL, and the players, to creating the safest future for our game, and all other contact sports.
The foundation has made their name as the task-force dedicated to preventing head injury through full-circle education. The group aims to continuously educate and update athletes on preventing and nurturing concussion all while they build their database on concussions through the collection and analysis of athletes’ brains, studying how they are impacted by the sports they play.
The MLL athletes that are joining the group made a bold statement this past week by becoming the largest group of active professional athletes in a single sport to make the commitment to donate their brains to science.
The breaking news falls in line with the MLL participating in the CLF’s Concussion Awareness Week, aimed to raise awareness of the seriousness of concussions. As a part of the campaign, players worked to share the importance of rest after head injuries, reporting concussion symptoms to coaches, parents and medical professionals, and educating teammates on how to recognize concussion-like symptoms in other athletes on the playing field.
These are just a few simple steps that every athlete, parent, coach, ref and spectator can take to ensure lacrosse is moving toward a safer future.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with former Harvard football player, turned WWE wrestler, turned crusader for concussions, CLF Co-Founder and President, Chris Nowinski, on the relationship between lacrosse and concussions, the MLL’s efforts to conquer the issue and the future sustainability of the game.
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Q&A with Chris Nowinski, Concussion Legacy Foundation
LaxAllStars: Thanks for taking the time to catch-up, let’s get started. Chris, how did the relationship between the MLL and CLF get started and what’s the focus?
Chris Nowinski: We’ve been very lucky to have been working with Major League Lacrosse for really 4 years on education and concussion policy within the league. I was introduced to the Commissioner [David Gross] through the folks at New Balance and the Commissioner said, “we want to be the best. We want to protect our athletes. We want to set the right example for the all of lacrosse, what can we do?”
So it began with working to change the culture within MLL. This is the second year we’ve had live and in-person training for all of the league. We brought it back this season and with Concussion Awareness Week we thought what would help draw attention to the issue would be recruiting players to donate their brains. We only got to about half of the league before the season started but at each training session we were able to meet with players and encourage them to donate their brains.
We were very happy with the 13 that stepped up led by Kevin Crowley and Tyler Fiorito, but we actually recruited more in the training session I ran last Saturday. I think the players in the league are very generous with their time and their energy, and every one is doing this because they want lacrosse to have the best future possible.
LAS: So to this point, what does the CLF know about lacrosse and why get involved? Is there any long-term data and does it matter since the game has changed quite a bit recently?
Nowinski: There is almost no long-term research on lacrosse because it is a young sport. We know lacrosse has a decent amount of concussions as a contact sport. What’s been good about lacrosse is hits to the head are not a necessary part of the sport, not an inherent part of the sport. So what’s been special is the effort of the folks like Major League Lacrosse, US Lacrosse there’s been a concentrated effort to drive hits to the head out of the game. I’ve seen it, I know the training is happening, I see the referees call it and I see the culture changing.
That’s one of the best things about lacrosse [laughs], I’m not meeting people that see concussions as a threat to the game. They see concussions as an unfortunate side effects of sports with a little contact. They see the leadership is taking the responsibility to evolve and raise awareness, led by people like David Gross and Steve Stenerson that have very aggressively tried to tackle this issue.
LAS: So would you say that this puts lacrosse in a better place than football? It doesn’t seem like we would have to change the foundation of the game in an effort to promote a safer game.
Nowinski: Of course. Lacrosse needs to remain vigilant and focused on removing as many head hits as possible, and certainly all intentional head hits. But, I don’t see lacrosse in the same category as a sport like boxing or football where you CAN NOT get rid of repetitive brain trauma. Trying to tackle people to the ground, trying to punch them in the head and knock them out, you can’t avoid repetitive brain trauma.
LAS: Then where does the focus need to be? The refs are calling it and the rules are there. Since contact is inevitable, is it about focusing on educating people to prevent and nurture concussions or is it still about changing the game even further to eliminate the chances?
Nowinski: It’s dual focus: It’s trying to prevent as many concussions as humanly possible. After prevention we absolutely need to get everybody as trained, educated and motivated to identify concussions as quickly as possible, remove players and manage their return appropriately. That’s the key message with Concussion Awareness Week and working with the MLL players, this is about protecting careers and protecting people. Here’s the symptoms of concussions and if you think you have one you need to pull yourself out and that will create the best outcome for you.
There’s a recent study published by the University of Florida that found that athletes who were removed immediately after they got hit in the head and had conscious symptoms recovered five days faster than athletes that finished the quarter, finished the game, or stayed in a few more minutes. Stress to the brain can easily make it worse.
We had another message that players were looking out for their teammates. While we want you to self-report, sometimes you can’t tell if you have a concussion. Either your brain is impaired and you can’t tell or sometimes the pressure of wanting to live up to your team’s expectations and not wanting to let your teammates down can be too much for someone to come ask for help. We tell every MLL player that it’s their responsibility to to look out for their teammates.
It’s your responsibility to ask for a concussion check if you see a player who is showing symptoms. That means if someone is hit in the head and they wobble, or they complain about headaches, you might be the only person who knows and it’s your job to let the coach or medical personal know that this is what you found out and then they can go perform a concussion assessment. The main takeaway is that it’s bad for their health to stay in, but frankly you don’t want a concussed teammate in the game because they’re going to lose the game for you. Their reaction time is off and their cognition is off, their basically useless.
LAS: Fantastic way to drive it home, you can’t win with concussions. So we’ve educated ourselves and our teammates, what else can we do to support the cause the other 51 weeks of the year?
Nowinski: I would encourage people to head to ConcussionFoundation.org and click on Get Involved. There’s a number of ways people can become advocates, get involved in research and support awareness efforts. This is a problem we can solve together and this is something that we owe to the kids to make the game as safe as possible.
LAS: Looking forward, what’s the next step for the CLF and lacrosse?
Nowinski: We’re excited to keep deepening our relationship with Major League Lacrosse and we’re excited because this year they named us as their charity of the year. They will be raising some money for us in things related to the All-Star Game. Our goal is to continue to deepen our relationship with Major League Lacrosse and use the celebrity of the players to share positive messaging and then continue to grow our relationship with all of lacrosse programs.
We’ve had nothing but great experiences with people in lacrosse and we want to continue to provide services to them so they can keep their athletes as safe as possible.
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Special thanks to Chris Nowinski, the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Major League Lacrosse for the time and effort dedicated to creating a better future for all athletes.
