University and the derek shealy foundation. My name is john solomon, editorial director with a Sports Society program. We are nonprofit washington dc, facilitate dialogue. I will be moderating the next 2 panels exploring best practices. Thank you to Brian Hainline for engaging the Student Foundation for allowing the opportunity. Let me personally say what a great honor it is, a conference i think a lot of people dont know the name derek shealy. Going to the radar. Derek played football. Tragically died when he sustained head injuries. The injuries were preventable. I didnt get a chance to meet derek but i got to know him a little bit. Previously as a reporter. A big part of this is honoring dereks legacy, and dialogue about the best way. And derek are that is what we are going to do. Last fall, healthy sports, available at healthysports. First of its kind free resource for parents, athletes, educators and others. The tool draws on the best data and expert analysis to evaluate 3 areas of physical activity, safety, and social and emotional wellbeing. Why are we talking about topics like mitigating injury, Emergency Action plans, potential management, independent medical care, talking about hitting limits, Mental Health concerns . High school, the most commonly played form. We get the best practices at the High School Level filtered down on the toxicology level. Let me introduce the first panel left to right. Joe is a visiting professor, Joe Eisenmann founded and directed Sports Performance at Michigan State university at the Training Research center. Lee david is an insurance consultant, works with School Districts. An expert on my ability risk for a Football Player. Next to joe is michael krueger, director of coaching for usa football, usa football with the Development Model. Michael previously served, in colorado. And a traveling clinic, with less timing. Harry previously was a tv producer for monday night football and served as senior vice president. Thank you for being here. There are a lot of topics to get to and hope we get to all of them. I want to focus on the big picture question. The last 5 to 10 years, one best practice that accrued and one area that really needs work . Do you want to start off . Lets stick with lionel, High Performance and i would give that response and there are improvements in some high schools, hiring qualified individuals but have a lot of practices carried out by coaches, qualified to lead the Conditioning Program at the school level. We will touch on that a little bit. What you have seen in terms of raising awareness of heads up and playing smart is a big improvement. Dont know where to begin except to say thank you to the coaches. A lot of good things the public does not know about. If you are asking me, keeping our heads up. Michael . Coming from the Scholastic Program most recently i definitely would have to say one of the most positive things we have done is return to play and return to learn and that is we dont just focus on the return to the Playing Field but returned to the classroom and treat athletes, dont rush them back and challenges that i think we still face, i think there is a perspective where we need to focus more on fundamental Skill Development and the technical aspects of the game especially the development level. We focus on skills and development and as we talked about today theres not a lot of research at least in the sense of research that drives these decisions and research in the area of all of these beneficial areas. I would like to start by saying to the shealys my oldest son was a 3year starting quarterback at Greenwich High School in connecticut which is the alma mater of steve young. In those three years he suffered six major injuries, two concussions, three fractures and a torn knee ligament. Only two of the six were suffering games, four and practice for scrimmage, led me to do some research and i found that time, 58 of concussions in High School Football were suffered on the practice field, not in the games. That number is 4 . It led me to gather a group of hall of famers to form practice six years ago and our breakthrough came two months ago when after meeting with coaches as the first point of contact winning their trust, talking football, educating them about the way the game is practiced at the highest levels, the coaches in new jersey to agree to rollback contact to the lowest level at any point at any level of the game, 15 minutes a week in the history of football, 6 hours total in preseason over 3 weeks, huge huge reset of the norm in High School Football and we are taking that model around the country, the second state will be announced into a half weeks and we look forward to expanding across the country. Lets talk about contact with practices and to set that conversation what contact is. Usa football has what live contact means. Can you go through that . Usa football was the First Organization to formally practice in the contact as well as defining levels that we can educate folks on the Different Levels we can introduce and plan and practice and prepare athletes. We have five level of contact we identified. The first three levels, airbags and control level are done without contact. The last levels we certified as contact levels, liveaction contact. The point was made that a lot of times we say liveaction and live tackling and light engagement. There is also another level of contact which is used at the ivy league level. Levels of contact have been effective in helping us define what to teach and how to continue the levels in practice and to help establish those. Do those definitions sounds right for contact . Anything we are missing . We take a different view. We use the definitions at the highest level which is to say fool contact is full have, full speed, taking players to the ground. Anything short of taking players to the ground is a limited contact and the way we believe after consultation with a number of nfl coaches that we ought to be encouraging a format in which players stay on their feet. The ball carriers engaged by a tackler who stops in with a shoulder, wraps him and holds him up. It is going to the ground where the injuries occur. Javier cardenas said earlier that 60 of catastrophic injuries in football involve the act of tackling or being tackled. Our medical consultant who you heard this morning has rated that as high as 80 but it is clear going to the ground is where the injuries are so our belief is the number one source of results for all of us, inexpensive and still get ready to play for friday night, take a huge chunk of tackling out of that. There is a skill to it. We need to teach coaches and that is what we are doing as we tour the country with our video clinic show them how the nfl coaches have mastered this art of teaching and limited contact in practice the skills you are going to need. I want to speak on behalf of the offensive lineman because i think blocking is also important. And the deflection of force protocol you introduced, scott peters really demonstrates what we can do and the offense of line and often forgotten. Playing devils advocate, practice like pros. They may not have experience on what physicality is like. The nfl guys have so much to teach us, they are truly the masters of this. As i say they are under restriction from the collective Bargaining Agreement as the ivy league was put under restrictions by the University President s in 2011 for the first time and those coaches were forced to innovate, forced to find ways to practice without fool contact. We would be foolish at lower levels of the game not to take their cues. So much of what these nfl coaches of learned is available on video. We make it available and two weeks ago after new jersey adopted these new limits, pat sharma, head coach of the giants came to rutgers university. Another good reason to have healthy squad ready to go on friday night. Your recommendations just the people know you say 15 minutes per week in the regularseason of full contact, correct . Thats right. Taking place to the ground. Six hours total during the preseason including scrimmages. Full context scrimmage counts one hour. We suggest if you want additional scrimmages, five scrimmage at doesnt count against your hours and yes, in the three weeks, six hours total full contact is plenty come has been agreed by these coaches in new jersey. Theyre ready to implement it in august. We will do a Scientific Research study that shows benefits, published about a a year from. Michael, what are your thoughts and where is usc football . Thanks. I really dont think where that far off in terms of talking about at the core of what we do. The two things i would say is one come when we Start Talking about limits, someone mentioned earlier about how we govern if you give the guidelines . How do we mandate those things . The important thing to realize is even if, when we set guidelines and guidelines that exist now, what we do in that 15 minutes is as important as how much time we can the coaches and give them for training. With the way we teach blocking, the way tackling is taught, the weight engagement is taught, thats extremely important. It isnt just about giving time. We will get to that later, but thats where we feel so much excitement and passion about what we are doing with the Football Development model. To answer your question about, we do make mistakes sometimes as adults and we think youth are many adults in the not. The work theyre doing is very good in terms of looking at what the guidelines should be. The reality is whatever we do in that 15 minutes need to be developmentally appropriate, needs to be related to what that youth player can handle at that age and at that stage of development both biologically and chronologically, and the plan accordingly to meet those needs. The guidelines are one thing but i would challenge your thinking and say what we do in that timeframe is as a more important than the amount of time that we put on it. There are certain drill safer than others. Absolutely. Is there a specific amount of time you all recommend . We are looking at it hard right now. We with the first ones to come up with any kind of formal guidelines that were supported by the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine. Like Everything Else in the game, as it advances and gross we look at those guidelines as part of the Football Development model one of the things were looking at all those guidelines. To go to that exact point, whats important realize is just the general guideline for practice from youth always to the nfl doesnt necessarily mean thats developmentally appropriate. That might be more appropriate to limit more at younger levels. It might be we at certain levels at specific stages of development. The important thing is we base that on Scientific Research, what are medical prussians tell us, and we put that into effe. Efficiently and in way we educate coaches to do that, i think kerry made a good point about thats why the levels of contact are very important because their significant difference between life action we take a player to the ground and where you dont. We should be defining and categorizing our drills with those levels of contact not to exceed those guidelines. But begin making sure that we educate coaches and proper technique and reset those guidelinesbased on aggressive development, both biologically and chronologically for players. Lets talk about proper techniques. We reached the point best practices we played shoulder tackle is the appropriate tackle for High School Football, meaning the rugby style tackle that peak carol made famous with the Seattle Seahawks . Ill jump on that, jon. The seahawks tackle was introduced in a video by pete carroll but the real architect was his assistant head coach rocky who became one of our first supporters. We called the seahawks and he said to pete, i know youre too busy. Do you have someone on staff who can tour with us and show the world your technique . He turned us on to rocky who is been a great friend over these last five years. Hes 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 its gotten different names, shoulder tackling, rugby style tackling. Theres a company that the rocky is a football, in seattle which has followed on as a successor to seahawks tackling. There are any number of variations to it now but after some years, and i know it wasnt instant consensus around the football world, but after some years weve all coalesced around the principles of seahawks tackling. Michael, is that what you see . I would again ask you to broaden your perspective. Tackling is one part of the game ended you think the shoulder tackling, all of our systems are geared towards keeping that out of the tackle. That was one of the recommendations. We support that but theres so much more to it in terms of how are we preparing kids for a point with that part of the game is introduced to them, what about the tackling the talk but engagement . We do need to focus and rocky has been a great friend to us as well in terms of introducing shoulder tackling to both of our groups, but how we start to think about gradually introducing contact, how do we teach players to save engage the body. Thats as important as the techniques we teach with the tackle. Preparing your feet, preparing your body. We learned that through games and activities that may or may not involve a a football. Thats important to remember that the tackling, the techniques are crucially important part of the game and we can teach it with a technique like advanced tackling system that we introduce now or the shoulder tackling system. But we need other blocking system that does the same thing and we need to also make sure we were working hard to prepare kids for the time when youre going to be introduced to that part of the game, and that its gradually introduce. Thats again and exciting piece of this Development Model that will be done progressively and the stages that make sense for whether our from a maturation standpoint. Jon, michael brought up some aspect of research, and outside of injury we dont do a very good job in our country in terms of supporting researchers to examine the science the tackling. So you mention i have a visiting professorship and him part of a rugby site group there. Rugby is not my forte or my sport, nor is tackling. My expertise in terms of skill, but i think learning lessons from the Rugby Community both in terms of funding mechanism but also some of the work theyre doing on this same exact topic of tackling and the science of it in terms of location of the hit and injury and optimal mechanics in the important thing for american football to learn from. I want to turn to insurance risks. Our Insurance Expert here on the panel. High school football, some schools are dropping it around the country. Some for participation reason, some for liability reasons. There was an article you were quoted in riesling in which you said that the insurance issues for Many Companies is a lot bigger than we may think. What are you saying that is perhaps driving concerned . The fragmentation that exists in the current Insurance Industry is one of our challenges. When i hear the conversation this morning about 13 organizations can get together and work through some of these issues, thats not having any Insurance Industry. What we have in the Public High School situation is a mixture of what we call risksharing or selfinsurance groups that really in 27 states are the dominant way of managing this risk, if you will, or dealing with the insurance issues, and then commercial insurance plays a large part and then went medical and catastrophic which is more of a Health Insurance coverage. Really whats overarching this issue is something i like to say is umbrella insurance or the high level, catastrophic risk insurance. Thats often with the leadership comes in. The top often drives down what happens. Sometimes they are not as in touch. They may not have done as Much Research but they may form opinions that drive decisions and i think thats where we have to Work Together from the bottom up to educate what are good practices of whats happening the sports insights world. Because now you have a situation where the uncertainty, dr. Hainline spoke, we dont know the answers to this medical problem and theres uncertainty in the entrance and should oftentimes ask up. They want of certainty. They want to know what the costs are going to be over the long run so the first thing that might do is put small wording change as some impact on how School Finance officers and those who are responsible for money might look at the risk. If that doesnt work they go further and then to the end of the day where they are excluding or denying coverage. We have programs that are being denied coverage of the because we havent communicated, have taken some of the smaller steps to make some attention and do a little bit of Creative Work on thi