FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Concord, Mass. September 17, 2013
"THE SMARTEST TEAM: Making High School Football Safer", an hour-long documentary designed to help football programs and athletes play safer and smarter, held its world broadcast television premiere on the stations of the Oklahoma Educational Television Association (PBS) in August, and will roll out to all other PBS stations throughout the fall beginning with the state of North Carolina tonight on September 17th, and ending in December.
Produced and directed by visionary youth sports parenting expert and author, Brooke de Lench, and drawing both on her experience as a parent of a concussed high school football and lacrosse player and as the founder and publisher of MomsTEAM.com, the acknowledged "pioneer" in youth sports concussion education, "THE SMARTEST TEAM" documents how de Lench worked with a high school in Newcastle, Oklahoma to address the challenges concussions pose in football.
"THE SMARTEST TEAM" begins where other concussion documentaries leave off, not simply identifying the risks of long-term brain injury in football but offering youth and high school programs across the country specific ways to minimize those risks, through a focus on what de Lench calls the "Six Pillars" of a comprehensive concussion risk management program:
- Comprehensive Concussion Education;
- Risk Minimization/Protection;
- Early Identification;
- Conservative Treatment;
- Cautious Return to Play; and
- Retirement
Through candid interviews of parents, players, the Newcastle High athletic trainer and team doctor, equipment manufacturers, and leading concussion experts, "THE SMARTEST TEAM" acknowledges the serious challenge concussions pose while showing in easy-to-understand terms how high school football programs can improve player safety by:
- Educating parents, players, coaches, and health care professionals on the signs and symptoms of concussion and the long-term health risks if concussions are not identified early and treated conservatively, and the importance of creating an environment in which athletes feel safe in reporting concussion symptoms;
- Protecting players from increased risk of traumatic brain injury by teaching them "heads up" tackling and blocking, equipping them with properly fitted helmets, strengthening their necks to better withstand the forces that cause concussion, and by limiting the number of hits they sustain over the course of a season and career;
- Arming sideline personnel (especially a certified athletic trainer) with new, cutting edge tools and technology, including impact sensors to track hits and alert sideline personnel to those which might result in concussion or brain trauma from an accumulation of sub-concussive blows, and a battery of quick and reliable sideline assessment tests to make "remove from play" decisions;
- Allowing concussed athletes the physical and cognitive rest they need in order for their brains to heal and to gradually return to a full school day ("return to learn");
- Returning athletes to play only after their symptoms have cleared, they are able to handle a full academic workload, their scores on balance, neurocognitive and visual tests have returned to their individualized baseline, and they have successfully completed a graduated exercise program without their symptoms returning; and
- Recommending retirement from contact or collision sports to concussed athletes when continued participation poses an unreasonable risk of permanent brain damage.
Narrated by two-time Super Bowl winner and Big Ten Network announcer, Howard Griffith, "THE SMARTEST TEAM" features a number of leading experts on preventing and treating head injuries, including:
- William P. Meehan, III, M.D., Director of the Sports Concussion Clinic and the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention at Boston Children's Hospital and author of "Kids, Sports, and Concussions";
- Rosemarie Scolaro Moser, Ph.D., Director of the Sports Concussion Center of New Jersey, author of "Ahead of the Game: The Parents' Guide to Youth Sports Concussion" and a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury panel;
- Joseph A. Congeni, M.D., Medical Director, The Sports Medicine Center, Akron Children's Hospital, and
- Coach Bobby Hosea of the Train Em' Up Academy and developer of the Head Free Tackle method.
A Mom's E-Mail
"THE SMARTEST TEAM" had as its genesis an email in February 2012 de Lench received from Kerali Davis, the mother of a high school football player in Newcastle, Oklahoma. "When Kerali wrote asking for my help in setting up a concussion risk management program, I decided the best way MomsTEAM and I could educate the largest number of parents, players, athletic trainers, and football coaches was not just to help the Newcastle Racers set up their program, but to capture it on film to make it available to a wider audience."
"This was my first documentary, but I couldn't be more pleased with result," says de Lench. "We couldn't have done it without the support of the entire Newcastle community, from the school superintendant to the athletic director and head football coach, from the athletic trainer to the parents and the athletes. I think the film shows what can happen when all stakeholders, especially moms, work together as a team to make the sport of football safer, not just for their kids but for all kids. More broadly, "THE SMARTEST TEAM" shows how we can not only preserve but strengthen youth and high school football, which play such an important part of the life of so many communities across America."
About MomsTEAM.com
Now beginning its fourteenth year, MomsTeam.com® is the premier online youth sports parenting information gateway for America's 90 million sports parents. The site currently offers over 10,000 pages of continually updated health and safety, parenting, nutrition and sports information and news, forums, blogs, and advice from a team of leading experts, veteran sport parents, and Olympic athletes. Good Housekeeping magazine selected MomsTEAM as one of the top three websites for sports parents.
MomsTeam.com's Concussion Center has been recognized as the "pioneer" in youth sports concussion education, and is widely regarded as being one of the most - if not the most - comprehensive resources for concussion information on the Internet.
About Brooke de Lench
In addition to being the Founder and Publisher of MomsTEAM, Brooke de Lench is the author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (HarperCollins).
Ms.
de Lench is a sought-after speaker on a wide range of youth sport
parenting topics. She has made appearances on all the major television
networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox), as well as "The Today Show," the "CBS
Morning Show," and three documentaries on youth sports, which aired on
ESPN, HBO and A&E respectively. She has also consulted for PBS's
"Frontline," HBO's "Real Sports," ABC's "Nightline," and ESPN youth
sports-related shows, and is quoted frequently in the print press,
including Time, Reader's Digest, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. Her opinion pieces have appeared on the op-ed pages of major newspapers nationwide, including The Washington Post and Long Island Newsday.
A former high school and college athlete and ranked squash player,
Brooke is the mother and past coach of triplet sons. She lives in the
Boston area.
For more information, including a press kit, please see www.TheSmartestTeam.com
Contact:
Ali Bailey
abailey@MomsTEAM.com
1- [781] 775-0280 ET
