Sports injuries were on my mind a lot today. My job here is to talk about basic things a youth soccer coach should know about the prevention and care of sports injuries. Thank heavens I had several of my graduate students help me prepare the material for these presentations when the Ugandan coaches visited us in Minnesota in March (shout out to Tara Robertson, Monique Foster, Ayanna Franklin, and Jim Winges-THANKS!). I am not an athletic trainer or a medical doctor or any such thing. I'm a coach, who knows just the basics. But they have so little access to any sort of medical care here that ever since Jens introduced me as "Dr." Bjornstal who would be talking about sports medicine I find myself inundated with questions about all types of sports injures, past and present. I have heard more stories than I can count from our coaches about how their own playing careers were cut short by injuries, knees and ankles being common sites among soccer players. Surgical repair is not really possible because it is not available, and far too expensive even if it were. So they truly have career ending injuries from events that would be blips on the radar screen for Americans. But thankfully many coaches have shared with me that they used these negative events in their lives as opportunities to enter the coaching profession, by coaching in youth soccer academies and schools and neighborhoods. But that doesn't mean that they don't also tell me about the sadness that they felt because they could no longer play soccer. They do. Diane
Uganda: Day 4 of Soccer Coach Training
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How does the lack of access to medical care for the types of injuries you describe impact coaches' decision making and coaching education? Does this change the way coaches coach things like aggression (e.g., tackling)? Does it change the way the trainers are instructing coaches? Did you discuss concussions, a hot topic in US right now?
Thank you for your blog, I am enjoying it very much!(and wish I were there)
Nice blog, Diane! It looks like a great intercultural experience. My regards to the whole crew. Are people already "wired up" for the World Cup? Only a few more days!
Hi Juergen, thanks very much for reading, and for the comment. Re: wired for soccer, this country is indeed crazy over soccer. Almost everyone I meet loves the game. We all had the chance on Saturday to attend a match in Nelson Mandela stadium where the men's national team Uganda Cranes took on Kenya. All of our coach participants were able to attend as well. The Cranes won 1-0. The return match is in Kenya in 2 weeks. I believe these matches are for determining who will go to the African championships. World cup fever has indeed hit. Diane
You ask a really good question, and the best I can answer would be to say that it does not seem to affect their decision making at present. It is viewed as something that is just a risk one takes. But in talking with them during my sessions about coaching youth soccer, I spent one of my two sessions on injury prevention and we did discuss the importance of many factors ranging from proper warm-ups, cool downs, nutrition and hydration, to fair play, good sleep, and other behaviors that can lessen their risks and still accommodate high levels of play. In my session on injury care, we did indeed discuss concussions and their recognition and management, and the importance of their role as coaches in watching for potentially injurious head contacts, encouraging their young athletes to report symptoms, and in recommending physician evaluation and sufficient rest/recovery time when concussions are sustained. I encouraged them to read more about it through the many good online sources available, such as the CDC site on sport-related concussions.