All Articles by Brooke de Lench

Excessive Adult Praise For Youth Athletes Can Backfire For Those With Low Self-Esteem, Study Suggests

Parents and other adults are inclined to heap the highest praise on children with low self-esteem who are most likely to actually be hurt by the compliments, finds a new study, with important implications for youth sports parents.

Looking Back With Pride, Looking Forward With Excitement

All is quiet at the MomsTEAM office this week. As we have done for the past thirteen years, we take a two-week year-end vacation to gear up for the New Year.

Stopping by to pick up a book, I look around the quiet office, I close my eyes and reflect on the biggest youth and high school sports stories of the year and wonder if we as a nation are any closer to our MomsTEAM mission of making sports safer, saner, less stressful and more inclusive or if we continue to spin wildly out of control in the crazy vortex that is youth sports in the 21st century.  I would like to think we are making some progress on the safety front, but less stressful? More inclusive? Not so sure we are making progress there. 

As much as we look back with pride on what we accomplished over the past year, highlighted by the release of our PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team", we eagerly look forward to the year ahead and the launch of our non-profit arm, the MomsTEAM Institute.

Caitlin Cahow: Being Openly Gay Not Only Reason For Inclusion In U.S. Delegation To Sochi Olympics

Sometimes, when it feels like all I read about in the newspapers and hear on television is about war and conflict, along comes a young woman with wisdom, grace, confidence and dignity beyond her years, an "old soul", if you will, ready to bring us together, to teach the world that we are all one people.  Catlin Cahow is just such a person.  

The naming by President Barack Obama of Caitlin Cahow to be a member of the U.S. delegation to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia came as no surprise to Brooke de Lench, not because she is openly gay but because offers the world a perspective on the power of sport in general, and the Olympics in particular, to unite, rather, than divide nations and people.

High School Football Playoffs: Not A Time For Concussion Safety To Take Back Seat To Winning


As the 2013 high school football season enters the home stretch, with teams fighting to stay alive in the playoffs, or preparing for traditional end-of-the-season games on Thanksgiving morning, the risk of concussion is an ever-present concern. 

Football player holding his head

But now is not the time to put winning ahead of safety.

Even in the best of times, studies show that high school football players face what one recently called a ‘culture of resistance' to reporting to sideline personnel that they are experiencing concussion symptoms.

As the 2013 high school football season enters the home stretch, with teams fighting to stay alive in the playoffs, or preparing for traditional end-of-the-season games on Thanksgiving morning, the risk of concussion is an ever-present concern. But now is not the time to put winning ahead of safety.

NOCSAE Ruling On Helmet Sensors Generates Controversy

The July 2013 decision by NOCSAE that modification of helmets with third-party after-market add-ons, absent retesting and recertification as configured, renders the certification void may be necessary to protect the integrity of its helmet standard, but at the cost of depriving athletes of cutting-edge concussion safety products.

Thanksgiving For Sports Moms: Make Your Kids Part Of The Team In The Kitchen, Says Katie Workman

For many families, Thanksgiving means family, friends, food, and football, often high school football. For moms responsible for preparing the big meal after getting back from the game is can be a really tough assignment. The answer? Get your kids to become part of the team in the kitchen says Mom100 blogger Katie Workman.

Olympic Hockey Star Julie Chu: Commitment + Honor + Unity = CHU


On Monday, I was able to catch up with three-time Olympic medalist Julie Chu, member of the U.S. Women's National Ice Hockey team, who just happens to be living and training for the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia in my neck of the woods outside Boston.

I decided it was a great time to ask her to reflect back on her hockey journey over the past twelve years, and to hear about how she and her team are preparing for the challenge of replacing the Canadian women atop the podium this time around.

Knowing that three-time Olympic medalist Julie Chu was training for the Winter Games Sochi, Russia just around the corner, Brooke de Lench decided it was time to catch up with the captain of the U.S. Women's National Ice Hockey team, whose career she has been following for a dozen years.

Protecting Athletes and Sports Safety Initiative Latest To Tackle Youth Sports Concussion Safety Issue

 

Last week in Washington D.C., I was privileged to have been invited to attend and participate in the kickoff event for an innovative two-year initiative called PASS (Protecting Athletes and Sports Safety).

A joint project of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine and the Department of Global Health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, PASS is the latest in a series of national programs designed to address and combat the incidence of catastrophic brain injuries among the more than twenty million youth who participate in organized sports annually.

Brooke de Lench found the kickoff event for an innovative two-year initiative called PASS (Protecting Athletes and Sports Safety) noteworthy for the fact that research scientists on on one panel all said they would allow their kids to play football, and the panelists on another conceded that edu-tainment is not the mainstream media's strength.

New Concussion Report's Failure To Discuss Impact Monitoring Unfortunate Omission

The MomsTEAM staff and I are still digging into the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council's three-hundred-some-odd page report on sports-related concussions in youth sports,[1]  but one thing jumped out at me at my first pass: When I did a search in the report for a discussion of impact monitoring devices (a/k/a hit sensors), I found only one brief mention of sensors in the committee's recommendation that the Centers for Disease Control fund large scale data collection efforts for research purposes, including data from impact sensors.

Conspicuous by its absence from the new IOM/NRC report on concussions in youth sports was any mention of the use of real-time impact monitoring systems on the sports sideline. Unfortunately, the lack of any such discussion will just end up making it that much more difficult to get the message out that the benefits of real-time impact monitoring, and place an additional obstacle in the path to their use.

Early Sport Specialization: Does It Lead To Long-Term Problems?

Sports specialization, including year-round sport-specific training, participation on multiple teams in the same sport and focused participation in a single sport, leads to long-term problems.