The MHSAA’s fourth health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on competition rules. It intends to locate the most dangerous plays in each sport and to try to reduce their frequency. For example:
We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.
We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.
We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.
We know that ACL injuries in female basketball players and volleyball players is near epidemic and wonder if there is equipment or conditioning that can be mandated or recommended to save our players from what are serious and sometimes career-ending injuries.
We can make changes ourselves – through MHSAA sport committees – for the subvarsity level, but our committees can only make recommendations to national rules committees for varsity level play. Over the next four years, we will be asking our sport committees to give more time to the most dangerous plays in their sport – identifying what they are and proposing how to reduce that danger.
From the Director is the official MHSAA Blog which will touch on pertinent school sports topics periodically throughout the school year from various MHSAA Staff.