All Articles by Brooke de Lench

Mouth guards or "mouth pieces" not only protect the wearer's teeth, tongue and lips, but help protect against head injuries such as concussions. Depending on specific regulations, the mouth pieces should be worn at all times during play. The mouthpiece must be a highly visible color and is mandatory.

Ever see a picture in your local paper of a summer "all-star" baseball team of 10 and 11 year olds and find it odd that nearly every kid in the picture is either the son or daughter of one of the coaches or of one of the coaches of a team during the regular season or the best friend of the coaches kid?

To say that politics and favoritism are often involved in the selection of all-star teams in youth sports would be an understatement, but making the selection process fairer is easier said than done.

Several years ago, my triplet sons tried out for the travel soccer club in our town. Two of my sons were wait-listed for no apparent reason, along with over sixty other boys who had previously been in the program.

During a college lacrosse game, I stepped into a hole on a poorly maintained field, tearing my ACL and the menial meniscus cartilage in my right knee. My knee was so badly damaged it required two surgeries and months of casts and rehabilitation. I never played lacrosse again. If someone had taken a few moments to check the field before the game began, I probably would never have been injured.

Several years ago, I started a travel soccer club after our triplet sons, who had been on an undefeated U 12 (under 12) travel soccer team in the Massachusetts town where we live, were not offered the chance to continue playing travel soccer that fall when they moved up to U-14. My immediate goal was to give them, and about sixty other kids who were also cut from the existing program, a chance to keep playing travel soccer.

There are between 450,000 and 600,000 soccer goals in the United States. Many are unsafe because they are unstable and either unanchored or not correctly anchored or counterbalanced.

Soccer was the only sport that actually grew in total participation during the 1990s, enjoying its greatest growth in high schools and community leagues according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA).

Goalies suffer a disproportionate number of injuries compared to those playing other positions. The American Journal of Sports Medicine reported in 1995 that, even though goalies comprise only six percent of soccer players, they suffer nineteen percent of all soccer injuries. When a player collides with the post of a heavy, stationary goal post, the player absorbs all of the impact of the collision.