Carsen Everly suited up Friday to play alongside his Woodridge Bulldogs football teammates for the first time this season.
The 15-year-old Cuyahoga Falls boy had been sidelined since early August when a helmet-to-helmet collision during practice left him with a concussion — his second concussion in two years.
Carsen’s dad, Tim Everly, has already talked to Carsen about what could happen if there’s a third.
“I told him, ‘Hey buddy, I know you love playing football, but I love you too much to let something bad happen,’ ” Tim Everly said. “For me, this is like three strikes and you’re out.”
When Tim Everly, 47, was playing high school football in Indiana 25 years ago, no one worried about concussions.
“They probably told us to rub some dirt on it and move on,” he said.
But in recent years — particularly after the NFL acknowledged concussions may lead to personality changes, depression, early-onset of dementia and other problems — parents, players and coaches of football and other youth sports are increasingly taking concussions seriously.
Akron Children’s Hospital is now involved in eight research projects aimed at preventing, healing and/or better understanding concussions in children and young people, said Dr. Joseph Congeni, the hospital’s director of sports medicine.
Congeni, who went into practice in 1988, said he knew concussions weren’t being treated well in the 1980s and 1990s.
“There was a myth you had to be knocked out,” he said.
At the same time, he said, youth sports and the way athletes train had been changing.
“If they threw on my footage from my youth, we’d look like we were playing in slow motion,” Congeni said.
Student athletes today are bigger, stronger and faster, he said. That means the impact of their collisions is more severe, making concussions more likely.
Congeni said he routinely gets calls from people asking him to endorse a new tool or gadget they claim can help prevent concussions. But there’s never evidence to back up those claims, he said.
“The biggest thing that’s exciting now is research,” Congeni said. “We’ve only just begun to learn.”
In recent years, doctors have discovered there are different types of concussions that might heal differently. A vestibular concussion, for example, involves the middle ear and might heal faster with physical therapy, he said.
Doctors have also discovered that people with concussions can have slow reaction times, somewhat like a drunk driver failing a sobriety test.
Here are four things Akron Children’s is studying. Some details about the projects are not included to protect the technology and ideas from being pirated.
1. HeadSense
This noninvasive device measures intracranial pressure by sending a 66 decibel-sound — about conversational level — through ear buds a patient wears, gauging how the sound passes from ear to ear. Some day, Congeni said, this device might be used on the sidelines of sporting events to accurately diagnose player’s concussions. At present, it is used to measure intracranial pressure as a concussion heals. Researchers at Akron Children’s and Vanderbilt University expect to present their findings to the medical community in coming months.
2. Flag football
A former NFL player who lives in Northeast Ohio is trying to figure out how to make flag football more fun so children play it longer before heading into tackle football, where the chance of concussion is higher. He also wants to tweak flag football so that children learn to play with their heads up so that when they do move to tackling, they’ll have less chance of getting a concussion.
3. Motion baseline
Performance Evaluation Group in Wadsworth hopes its device — which works similarly to a Wii gaming system — can simulate the acceleration, deceleration and explosive movement involved in sports. Concussion patients wear a wireless heart monitor that lets doctors measure how they perform in a sports situation instead of sitting quietly in an exam room.
4. SyncThink
This sideline tool is in early stages of development for children, although it’s already being used at some colleges. Trainers use it like a view finder, peering into a player’s eyes looking for abnormal eye movement. Developers think concussions could be accurately diagnosed within 60 seconds in combination with other traditional sideline testing. Notre Dame and Clemson University have already purchased the device for use.
Cautious return to play
Doctors at Children’s used HeadSense to measure the intracranial pressure of Carsen Everly before he was cleared to play with Woodridge Friday.
Sometimes worried parents and grandparents ask Congeni, who directs sports medicine at Children’s, if any children should play sports, considering the risk.
Congeni, who coached high school sports for 17 year, said each of his six children played high school sports.
One of his sons, now a medical resident in South Carolina, went on to play football in college. If his son were asked to name the best days of his life so far, Congeni said, those playing football would be among them.
Congeni’s kids have grown out of high school sports now, but if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t prevent them from playing, he said. He would, however, reconsider when they returned to a sport after a concussion.
Depending on the child’s age, he might keep a child out an entire season.
As research continues, Congeni said the best tool athletes have now on the field to help them prevent and diagnose concussions are athletic trainers.
They’re in many high schools, but not all can afford them. Akron Children’s is helping out at North and Kenmore high schools in Akron this year, he said.
Congeni said athletic trainers should also be at junior highs and middle schools and, within the next 10 years, he’d like to see an athletic trainer at every youth tournament and with every traveling team.
Many booster clubs want to raise $8,000 or $10,000 every year to buy a new piece of team equipment, Congeni said. But that money would be better spent on an athletic trainer who would not only help with concussions, but with heat stroke and other emergencies, such as children collapsing because of an undiagnosed heart condition.
“Having an athletic trainer,” he said, “is like having a lifeguard at the pool.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.