Civil disobedience. 8 00tch sunday night at eastern on cspans q a. Ways of student athletes can reduce injury risk. We will hear from the usa football director of coaching, michael kruger. The panel held at George Washington university was moderated by the Aspen Institute john solomon. Good afternoon. My name is john solomon. Editorial director with the Aspen Institute sports and society program. We are a nonprofit in washington, d. C. Whose mission is to convene leaders, facilitate dialogue and find solutions to help the Public Interest in sports. I will be moderating our next two panels that will be exploring best practices for High School Football health. Thank you to the eric shealy foundation and George Washington university for their support in allowing the aspen to be part of this conference. Let me personally say what a great honor it is to be here myself at a conference that is in the memory of eric shealy. I think a lot of people dont know the way the name derek shealy when it comes to a lot of division iii College Football players. They sometimes go under the radar and are not noticed. He played college foot all because he loved the game and the bonta for his teammates and tragically he died in 2011 when he sustained head injuries at a College Football practice. And the injuries were preventable. The death should not have happened. I didnt get a chance to meet derek but i feel like i got to know him a little bit through kent and kristin. Previously when i was a reporter i covered the aftermath of dereks death in a big part of the Conference Today is honoring dereks legacy and his legacy is a candid and open dialogue about the best way to protect athletes from catastrophic injuries. Tothats what we are going do. We are going to talk about High School Football and we are focusing on high school for a couple reasons. The Aspen Institute released a new cool called healthy sport index. This is available at healthy sport index. Com. Freethe first of its kind, resource for parents, athletes, educators and others to make the most informed decisions possible when picking the sports for you. The tool draws on the best available data and expert analysis to evaluate the most Popular High School sports based on three areas of health. Safety andtivity, social and mental wellbeing. The conversations that we have today will be used by the Aspen Institute to help fill out our best practice section on the website. The other reason we are focusing on high school is that the conditions, populations, assets and challenges in football can be very different between pro football, college, high school and youth with all. What works at one level may not be as affect it at another level. We are going to talk about topics like mitigating catastrophic injury, Emergency Action plans, concussion prevention and management, independent medical care, offseason conditioning, tackling city limits and techniques. Mental health, Insurance Risk and teen culture. High school is really the linchpin of football in our country because it is the most commonly played form. Its where the most number of participants reside. We feel if we can get the best practices happening at the High School Level those can also filter down to the youth level and up to college as well. Let me introduce our first panel. Joe, the head of Sports Science and a visiting professor at Leeds Beckett university. And directed spartan performance at Michigan State university, a youth Sports Performance training and research center. Next to him is lee devi, an insurance consultant with albert risk and directed spartan performance at management worksh School Districts to manage risk across the country. Hes an expert on liability risk for foot all and a former High School Football player. Next to him is michael kruger, director of coaching for usa football. Usa football is in the process of creating a Football Development model for how to coach, play and learn the game. Michael previously served at the High School Athletic administrative level for 15 years in colorado and was an associate professor at Metro State University in denver. And finally we have terry oneill. Travelingder of a clinic that shows youth and High School Football coaches how nfl and College Teams practice with less contact. He previously was a tv producer for espn, abcs monday night foot all and cbs sports and served as a Senior Vice President for the new orleans saints. Then you all for being here. There are a lot of topics we are going to try to get through. To start just trying to focus this conversation with pig picture questions for each of you briefly going down the line. In the last five to 10 years one best practice when it comes to High School Football health that you think has improved and what is one area that really needs more attention and is not there yet . Im going to stick with what i know best and thats the area of treating an conditioning, High Performance or strength and conditioning. I would give that response for things that have improved. I think there are improvements in some high schools. Hiring qualified individuals to carry out these programs. But in the same breath we still have a lot of ill practices being carried out by football toches who are not qualified lead strength and conditioning programs at the High School Level. Aboutare going to talk that a little bit. What you have seen in terms of raising awareness of heads up and playing smart has been such a big improvement that i dont know where to begin except to say thank you to the coaches and i think we are doing a lot of good things that may be the public does not still know about. If you are asking me i think we are keeping the heads up is the main improvement. Coming from the scholastic world most recently i definitely would have to tell you that one of the most positive things weve done is to expand return to play and include return to learn concept and that is that we dont just focus on the return to the Playing Field we also focus on the return to the classroom and we look at it holistically and we treat athletes up greatly in that manner and we dont rush them back in any capacity. Challenges that i think we still face definitely i think that there is a perspective where we need to focus more on fundamental Skill Development and get away so much from the scheme and the technical aspects and tactical aspects of the game especially the Youth Development level. We focus on skills and fundamental developing. And then also as weve talked about today theres not a lot of research being done at least in the sense that research that we can utilize to drive some of these decisions so i think continued research in the area especially of youth and High School Football would be very beneficial. Would like to start by aying that my oldest son was threeyear starting quarterback at Greenwich High School in connecticut which was the oma mod or of steve young. And in those three years he suffered six major injuries. Concussions, three fractures and a torn knee ligament. Only six were suffered in games. Four in practice or scrimmage. It led me to do some research and i found that 50 of concussions in High School Football were suffered on the practice field, not in the games. That number in the nfl is 4 . It led me to gather a group of hall of famers whom i had known in foot all in television and together we formed practice like pros six years ago. Our breakthrough came two months ago when after meeting with coaches as our first point of contact, winning their trust, talking football with them, educating them about the way the game is practiced at the highest levels, we got the coaches in new jersey to agree to roll back attact to the lowest level any point at any level of the game 15 minutes a week in the history of football, six hours total in preseason over three weeks. The norm we think in High School Football and we are taking that model around the country, the second state will be announced in two and half weeks and we look forward to expanding it across the country. Thank you. About contact at practices. We need to define what contact is. Usa football has some definitions of what contact means. Can you go through usa footballs definitions . Usa football was the First Organization to formally adopt practice and contact guidelines and limitations as well as defined levels of contact so we can educate coaches on the Different Levels that we can introduce so we can plan and practice appropriately and prepare our athletes. We have five levels of contact that we identified. , air,rst three levels bags and control level are done without player to player contact. Levels which we certify as contact levels is both thawed and liveaction contact. The point was made earlier that a lot of times we say liveaction or life tackling, live engagement. Theres also another level of contact which we call fud which is used at the ivy league level. Those levels of contact have been very effective in helping us to find what we can teach, how we should teach it, the levels in practice and to help establish those types of guidelines. To those definitions sound right for contact . Is there anything else we are missing . We take a different view. We use the definitions that we use at the highest level of the game which is to say that full contact is full pads, full speed, taking players to the ground. Anything short of taking players to the ground anything short of taking players to the ground is limited contact. A have encouraging thud, format in which players stay on their feet. The attacker stops in with the shoulder, grabs him and pulls him up. It is going to the ground where the injuries occur. Thedenas said 66 active of tackling are being tackled are involved in the catastrophic events of football and it has been rated as high as 85 , but it is clear that going to the ground is where the injuries are. Number onehe immediate source of results for all of us, inexpensive and still get you ready to play friday night, take a huge chunk of tackling out of practice. There is a skill to it, though, when you teach coaches. That is what we are doing as we tour the country with our video clinic. Show how you master the art of teaching and limited contact formats the skill you need on game day in practice. I just want to say on the half of the offensive lineman for just a minute because i think blocking is also important. Absolutely. Blocking has a deflection of force protocol you introduced, which i think is awesome. Guys, iters, those really demonstrates what we can do in terms of the offensive line and with those hit that are repetitive and often forgotten. Contact and the blockers. Absolutely, absently. Just playing devils advocate, they say, practice like pros, but these are High School Kids and they may not have as much experience in terms of tackling and physicality. How do you respond to that . The nfl guys have so much to teachers. They truly are the masters of this. As i say, they are under restrictions from the collective bargaining agreement, just as the ivy league was put under restrictions by University President s in 2011 for the first time, and those coaches were forced to innovate, forced to find ways to practice without full contact. We would be foolish at lower levels of the game not to take much of what nfl players have learned and to make it available. Even better, two beaks ago after new jersey adopted the new limits, the head coach of the giants came to rutgers university, made a presentation to 600 new jersey coaches, which we videotaped and sent to all 343 football playing schools in the state, to show them how the giants practice with limited contact. It has gotten huge reception by High School Coaches who understand this is the way to keep our guys safe. If you do not care about player safety and all you care about is way in, that is another reason for you will have a healthy squad friday night. Recommendations are, you say 15 minutes per week in a regular seasonal full contact . That is right, taking players to the ground. And then six hours total during the preseason, including scrimmages. Full contact scrimmage counts one hour. Suggest if you want additional scrimmages, a full scrimmages the way to going does not count against ours. Total contact is plenty and has a been agreed by and coaches with coaches in new jersey. We will do a Scientific Research study that shows the benefits published about one year from now. Michael, what are your thoughts and where is usa football and contact . Thanks. I really dont think we are that far off in terms of talking about at the base and core of what we do. Two things i think we would say is, one, when we Start Talking about limits, someone mentioned earlier about how to be governed if we get guidelines . How do we govern that and mandate those things . The important thing to realize is even if or when we set guidelines that exist now, what we do in that 15 minutes is as important as what we give the coaches and give them training. As terry said, with the way we teach blocking on the way that tackling is taught, and with the way engagement is taught, that is extremely important. It is not just about time. We will get to that later, but that is where we feel so much excitement and passion about what we are doing with the Football Development model and to answer your question, we do make the mistakes sometimes as adults, and we think that youth are many adults and they are not. Not in five that terry is saying that at all because the work we are doing is really good in terms of looking at the guidelines and what they should be. The reality is whatever we do and that 15 minutes needs to be developmentally appropriate and related to what that youth player can handle at that age and stage of development biologically and chronologically, and that we plan accordingly to meet those needs. The guidelines are one thing but i would challenge your thinking and say that what we do in that timeframe is as important as the amount of time we put on it. Absolutely, and there are certain drills safer than others. Absolutely. Is there a specific time you recommend . We are looking at it hard right now. We were the first ones to come out with any kind of formal guidelines that were supported by the any gan the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine. And like anything else in the game, as it advances, we look at those guidelines as part of the Football Development model and as we are looking at now are the guidelines. To go to that exact point, what is very important to realize is that just a general guideline for practice, from youth all the way to the nfl, does not necessarily mean that is the mean that is developmentally appropriate. It may mean we have certain levels that certain stages of development. The important thing is we base that Scientific Research about what our medical professionals tell us, and we put that into effect. You know, efficiently, and the way we educate coaches to do that, i think terry made a good point about that his wife the levels of contact are important because there is significant difference between liveaction where you take a player to the ground and what you do not. We should be defining and categorizing our drills with those levels of contact not to exceed the guidelines. Again, making sure we educate coaches and proper technique and we set those guidelines based on progressive development, both biologically and chronologically for players, through the game. Lets talk about proper techniques. Point where we believe the shoulder tackle is the appropriate tackle for high thatl football, you know, other tackle the pete carroll made that peak carroll made famous of the Seattle Seahawks . The seahawks tackling was introduced in the video by pete carroll, but the real architect was his assistant head coach. He became one of our first supporters. We called the seahawks and i said to pete, i know you are too busy. Do you have someone on staff who can tour with us and show us your technique . He turned us on to rocky, who has been a great friend over these last five years. He is now a christian minister. He left a milliondollar job at the seahawks to become a christian minister in southern california. A tremendous guy. But there have been derivatives of his style, and it has gotten different names, shoulder tackling, rugbystyle. Now that rocky is out of football, a company, which has followed as the successor of the a numbertackling, has of variations to it now. After some years, and i know it wasnt instant consensus around football world, but after some years, we have all coalesced around the principles of seahawks tackle. Ask you tojust broaden your perspective. Tackling is one part of the game. I do think the shorter tackling is geared toward keeping the head out of the tackle and we support that, but there is s