Brooke de Lench

As readers of this space well know, MomsTEAM and I have long advocated that the best way to help keep our kids playing interscholastic sports is for schools to hire certified athletic trainers (ATs). 

Years before sport concussions took over as the predominant youth sports safety issue of the 21st centry, we were highlighting the critical and unique role that ATs play in recognizing, evaluating and managing concussions.

Being the mother of an athlete is a challenging yet rewarding role.  So momsTEAM has designated May as Sports Moms Month and is celebrating by asking some of our favorite sports moms to share their wisdom by responding to a series of questions. 

So far this month we have heard from a fascinating range of sports moms, from a mom of an Olympic athlete to moms who were themselves Olympic athletes, from a mom of two former minor league baseball players to a Minnesota hockey mom and author.

For Mother's Day, we hear from MomsTEAM's founder and publisher, Brooke de Lench:

Two nights ago, I played a small part in making history, and, hopefully, in starting a new revolution.

Concord, Massachusetts, the town where I have lived for the past twenty-five years and where the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in 1775, voted at our annual town meeting to approve Warrant Article 32 banning the sale, after January 1, 2013, of non-sparkling, unflavored water in single-serving (e.g. 34 ounces/1 liter or less) plastic bottles.  

This past weekend,  the Hey Coach Tony show on a local Connecticut radio station devoted an entire hour to discussing one of MomsTeam's most popular  articles: the one listing questions to ask youth sports coaches at the pre-season meeting with parents. 

In case you don't know about Coach Tony, he is what I would call a "guy's guy": a tough-talking "shock jock"-type of radio host who tends to shoot from the hip, and with a reputation for disdaining political correctness and for using outdated terms for people he doesn't like (I cringed while listening to an earlier show when he used the word "retarded" and "retard' more than a dozen times to describe a person he did not care for). 

The video clip of Landon Collins went viral almost instantly, not to mention setting the blog- and Twitter-sphere ablaze.

There was the nation's top ranked high school safety announcing his decision to attend the University of Alabama during the Under Armour All-America Game three weeks ago, while his mom, April Justin, looked on with a pained expression on her face, shaking her head in disapproval of his choice.