Mark Hyman's Blog, page 9

No new trial for notorious hockey dad Tom Junta

The most notorious sports parent of all time? It has to be Thomas Junta, the Massachusetts hockey dad who got into an argument with another dad in the locker room of the local rink, left to go to his car, came back to the rink, confronted the other dad, pummeled him with his bare fists and killed him.

It was a highly publicized, wrenchingly tragic case that cost two families their fathers. One died in the brawl. The other has been languishing in prison. (In 2002, a jury convicted Junta of inv...

One hand up - way up - for trainers on the sidelines

 

This story, unfortunately, will be repeated a dozen times during pre-season high school football workouts. Brandon Burkes, a promising linebacker in Greensboro, N.C., cracked helmets with a teammate in practice and broke his neck in two places. This one ends happily. Thanks to a quick medical response, Brandon suffered no paralysis. His football-playing days are over, though.

The story raises two important questions: Should certified athletic trainers be present for all high school football w...

The whys - and why nots - of ACL reconstruction

Interesting and important piece last week on the New York Times "Phys Ed" blog on ACL injuries and whether the most aggressive treatment (surgery) is always best. Research just published in the New England Journal of Medicine raises real doubts. Patients who had ACL reconstruction- an expensive and relatively complicated operation - were followed in a study by researchers from the University of Sweden along with a second group that opted to forgo surgery and be treated with physical therapy o...

One coach speaks out about specializing in sports

This isn't the first post in this space about reasons to encourage kids to play many sports - not just the one that a parent wants to coach or a child seems to have decent ability in. More like the third. Or thirtieth.

But just when you begin to think there's nothing more to say about early specialization, there's more to say. Roc Murray is baseball coach at Rocklin High School in Northern California. He's the 2010 California Coach of the Year as voted by the California Coaches' Association. (...

Kids baseball on TV? Check your local listings

Sure, I took off the entire month of July. Didn't everyone?

MLB Network just announced that August is Youth Baseball Month, by which it means that it has beefed up coverage of youth games over the next 30 days. MLB Network has coverage of the RBI World Series, National Youth Baseball Championship and the Ripken World Series. Twelve games in all including two from Cal Ripken's kids' baseball campus just up the road from me in Aberdeen, Maryland.

Over on ABC/ESPN, it's Extreme Youth Baseball Mont...

"What are your goals for a child playing sports?"

Peter Barston is back with another question. Peter is the remarkable teen from Darien, Connecticut who enlightened us last winter with an unusual research project.

Peter, assisted by his dad, decided he had to get to the bottom of this question: Why do kids play sports? So he put together a survey and passed it out to hundreds of kid players in his hometown. When he'd analyzed the responses, Peter concluded the following. Kids play sports for fun. Not for scholarships. Not so they can advance...

"An unlikely source of hope in Newark, NJ"

Inspiring coach. Wonderful story.

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This post originally published at http://www.youthsportsparents.blogspo...

When the adults chase refs to the locker room

What's the worst thing you've ever seen happen to a ref or umpire at a youth sports game?

I heard some doozeys recently while working on this article for the New York Times.

A football official in Oregon told me about being chased from the field to the locker room after a game, then having adults pounding on the door trying to get in.

A basketball ref, also in Oregon, recalled being doused with a large cup of soda.

A basketball official in Ohio remembered working a rec league game last season in ...

Wanted: Families on the path to college sports

I've begun work on a second book on the business of youth sports. I'll be exploring ways in which the commerce side of things is shaping the experience that kids are having.

I have some interesting stuff in my notebook and some promising reporting trips planned over the next few months. If you have suggestions, comments, thoughts on the subject, I'd be happy to hear from you.

One thing I plan to examine in the book is the (surprisingly) complex process of helping a child reach his/her goal of b...

"We see kids hurt before they become athletes"

Suddenly - and encouragingly - overuse sports injuries are getting a lot of attention this month in some prominent publications.

gets much of the credit. Two articles this week focus on the surgeon's new initiative Stop Sports Injuries. Andrews sees a startling number of kids with overuse sports injuries in his clinic in Birmingham. This year, as president of the , he nudged the AOSSM to launch STOP.

The STOP program launched in Apr...