Last year in Journalism class, Keenan Sanford, a student at Wilsonville High School, wrote an article about concussions in youth football. One week later, he ended up getting one. 

In his article, he talked about how kids who play tackle football are prone to having seizures or even getting Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). While Mr. Sanford did not experience symptoms that were this serious, the fear of having these symptoms can stop kids from playing football at a young age. Not only this is going on in Wilsonville, Oregon, but this is a nationwide issue. At Addison Trail High School by Chicago, Illinois, the school had a decline in youth football teams from 12 to 4 teams. In fact, one program went down from 150 kids to 11 kids, as that team had to shut down (John Keilman, par. 4). This just shows that kids are looking after their own safety, even if it means quitting a game they love.

The symptoms Mr. Sanford did feel was that he experienced “headaches, sensitivity to light and sound, confusion and balance problems.” When someone has all of these different symptoms, not only does it affect their football life, but it also affects someone’s regular life. Headaches can cause someone to feel sluggish and not want to do anything except go back to bed. It can also take a big toll on someone’s ability to concentrate on someone. For Keenan, it was “tougher to concentrate on schoolwork.” Sensitivity to light and sound can cause someone to feel a lot of pain to a sound or bright light that would affect most other people. Which makes it almost impossible to work effectively in school or even be in most buildings.  

On top of a concussion, he also suffered severe neck strains. Both of these injuries came from a hit by an offensive lineman during a play in Keenan’s last game this year. This was also on a perfectly legal hit, so we are not talking about a dirty hit here. That is for another story. What we are talking about here is a simple tackle play that severely injured Mr. Sanford and cost him the rest of the season. It took him two and a half weeks to get back to school and almost another to actually start learning again in the classroom. It will take him a week and a half to even start doing something simple like throwing a bullpen session to get ready for baseball. Which takes not nearly the amount of physical toll on the body than to lift weights and eventually put on the football pads again. Even when Keenan can get back on the football field, it’s not like he will be perfectly healed. “Whenever I walk around, my head starts to hurt.” It will take him weeks to get back into football shape to get ready for the start of next season.

This all relates back to Mr. Sanford prior article because he may be a freshman at Wilsonville High School, but just a year ago, he was a youth football. So when one hit has this much effect on someone’s everyday life, this is definitely something to watch out for the younger kids to come.