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Teen’s death a tragedy for schools, a lesson for us all
Sep 10th
Written by Ann Schimke on Sep 9th, 2013. | Copyright © EdNewsColorado.org
It was a hot August afternoon and football practice was just getting underway at Cherokee Trail High School in Aurora. Amid the gruff calls of assistant coaches and the smack of colliding shoulder pads came Coach Monte Thelen’s matter-of-fact voice at the end of each play, “Stay up, stay up, stay up!”
Football players at Cherokee Trail High School take part in a “thud” practice as an assistant coach looks on.
It was a half-pads “thud” practice and he wanted players to stay on their feet.
“We’re trying to limit the number of times players hit the ground with each other,” said Thelen. ”We didn’t do that 10 years ago. I’m not even certain we did that eight years ago.”
This kind of safeguard is just one of many measures that has been employed over the last several years to help prevent an invisible and potentially life-threatening injury: concussions. In the Cherry Creek school district, where Cherokee Trail is located, the issue resonates with particular intensity because it is where Jake Snakenberg, a Grandview High School freshman, was playing football in 2004 when he took a routine hit and died of “Second Impact Syndrome” the next day.
Along with increasing awareness about concussions in the NFL and at the collegiate level, the 14-year-old’s death helped change the way youth concussions are handled in Colorado, giving rise to the Jake Snakenberg Youth Concussion Act, which took effect Jan 1, 2012.
The death of an athlete may be the most frightening consequence of concussions, but memory problems, concentration problems and other temporary cognitive deficits are more common outcomes. So while coaches and other advocates of good concussion management certainly want to prevent lethal ”second hits,” they also want to ensure that concussed students have an efficient recovery so they can function in the classroom.
“It’s not just about return to play. It’s not just about sports,” said Karen McAvoy, director of the four-year-old Center for Concussion at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children ”You cannot return to play until you have 100 percent returned to learn.”
While experts agree that “Jake’s Law” has improved concussion management practices, they say that the state’s school districts and even its doctors do not always approach concussion management in a uniform way.
In Colorado, there is no statewide database on the number of youth concussions, sports-related or otherwise. However, national studies suggest that high school athletes sustain an estimated 136,000-300,000 concussions per year and the numbers have steadily increased. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found that concussion rates in high school athletics increased by 16 percent annually from the 1997-1998 school year to the 2007-2008 year. The same study found that the most concussions occurred in football, followed by girls soccer.
Impact of Jake’s Law
Jake’s Law, which applies to students 11-18 in school, club or recreational sports, requires that students suspected of sustaining a concussion be removed immediately from practice or games. In addition, students must be cleared by a doctor or other health care provider before returning to play. Finally, the law requires coaches to take annual trainings on the signs of concussion.
McAvoy said the legislation also helped emphasize the medical side of the concussion equation. Prior to the legislation, families were under no legal obligation to get kids suspected of sustaining concussions during sports checked by a doctor, and some chose not to, she said. With its return-to-play medical clearance provision, the law changed that.
“Through all of this the thread that you see is the culture change,” said McAvoy, who was a school psychologist at Grandview High School when Snakenberg died.
McAvoy said districts like Cherry Creek, Jeffco and Dougco have been at the forefront when it comes to developing effective concussion management programs.
Dr. Danny Mistry, chair of the Concussion Task Force in Grand Junction, said that despite a dramatic increase in awareness because of Snakenberg’s death and his namesake law, youth concussion management practices vary widely around Colorado. Although there are exceptions, he said, the east side of the state is generally ahead of the west side.
“It varies because of resources and education,” said Mistry, who practices at Western Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Grand Junction, and who is a primary care team physician for Colorado Mesa University and the Colorado Rockies, as well as a team physician for USA Swimming.
In communities where concussion management is lagging, it may be due to both health care providers and the school system. For example, Mistry said, some doctors may not see many youth athletes and may not be aware of the latest protocol for concussion management. In addition, school districts often can’t afford widespread staff training on concussions.
Like others experts, Mistry and McAvoy emphasize that student concussions must be managed by a team including athletic staff, parents, health care providers and teachers, who can often provide critical feedback about how a concussed student is functioning in the classroom.
Mistry said he hopes the National Institutes of Health or state departments of education will eventually set aside money to educate schools on concussion management.
“We’re in the midst of an epidemic and we have to stem the tide,” he said.
Tools of the trade
Talk to high school coaches and athletic directors around the state and you’ll hear about a variety of tools in place for concussion prevention, identification and management. Often, they’ll note that changes were underway even before Jake’s Law took effect — they saw the direction the pendulum was swinging.
That swing may have started in 2009, when Washington passed the first in a flurry of state statutes on the issue, the Zackery Lystedt Youth Concussion Bill. Today, the District of Columbia and every state except Mississippi have some sort of youth concussion law.
In Colorado, concussion prevention and education efforts include switching to lower-contact drills, reducing the weekly number of full-contact drills, experimenting with protective equipment such as the “Guardian Caps” that fit over football helmets, giving coaches pocket-sized cards listing concussion symptoms and having players and their parents read and sign concussion information sheets.
The free REAP Project booklet from the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children is used widely in Colorado. It has also been used in New York and Florida.
Many school districts also use a highly-regarded concussion management protocol written by McAvoy called REAP, which stands for Reduce, Educate, Accommodate, Pace. Contained in a colorful 11-page booklet available for free from Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, the protocol emphasizes the team approach, the careful monitoring of physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms, and a graduated “return-to-play” that allows student athletes to ramp up physical activity over the course of several days.
As recommended in REAP, districts have increasingly addressed cognitive symptoms of concussions, such as mental fatigue and difficulty concentrating, by making accommodations in the classroom such as reduced note-taking or extra time on tests.
Mark Kanagy, assistant principal of Windsor High School and athletic director in Weld RE-4 School District, said this is true in his district. In some cases, the district has put in place a temporary 504 plan, which are normally used to accommodate students with disabilities, for a concussed student.
Some Colorado districts also use a computer-based test called ImPACT, which measure students’ neurocognitive function at a baseline level as sports seasons begin, and can be administered after a suspected concussion to help determine whether new deficits exist.
While experts caution that ImPACT tests aren’t foolproof, they say they can be one piece of the puzzle in determining whether students are affected by concussion. The test is used at about 100 Colorado middle and high schools, according to company officials.
Paul Cain, athletic director for Mesa County District 51, said his district pays about $1,000 a year to use ImPACT for students in football, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, baseball, softball, diving, and cheerleading, as well as for students in other sports whose parents have requested it.
Kanagy, assistant principal of Windsor High School and athletic director in Weld RE-4 School District, said ImPACT “makes things more quantifiable…It helps take some of the guesswork out of it.”
He said a student might feel fine and have no headaches or other symptoms after a concussion, but if the post-injury ImPACT test doesn’t align with the baseline test, it can indicate something is still wrong.
Still, not everyone thinks ImPACT is an ideal tool. They say that students packed in a computer lab taking the test may not earn reliable baseline scores because they are distracted or deliberately performing poorly. In addition, not all doctors know how to interpret the test.
McAvoy said most school districts never use ImPACT because of its cost. “And that’s okay,” he said. “ImPACT is not necessarily where I would put limited resources.”
Trickle down effect
As standards for concussion education and management among youth athletes have risen, advocates say non-sports concussions in youth are starting to get more notice as well. Those concussions may result from a car accident, a fall or a bicycle crash outside of school, which means school staff don’t always know about them right away, if at all.
“Our biggest issue is getting non-athletic concussions communicated to our schools,” said Cain. “As a community that’s the next thing we need to work on.”
It’s not unusual for non-athletic concussions to outnumber sports-related ones. During the 2011-12 school year, about 60 percent of 200 student concussions in District 51 were not sports related, said Mistry. At Cherokee Trail High School, there were 25 non-athletic concussions last year compared to 15 sports-related.
“Really it comes down to the responsibility of the parent, the responsibility of the child,” said Steve Carpenter, athletic director at Cherokee Trail.
While some families inform the school nurse about out-of-school head injuries and, in Cherry Creek district staff receive training on recognizing non-athletic concussions, Carpenter said, “Those are tricky ones.”
McAvoy said while Jake’s Law exclusively addresses sports concussions in 11-18 year olds, concussion guidelines she co-wrote for the Colorado Department of Education, also address concussions sustained outside of sports and in students under 11.
Still, since parents aren’t required to seek medical advice for non-athletic concussions, it can be hard for school staff to know how to proceed, she said.
“When does a school feel comfortable releasing them back to recess, physical education and those kinds of things?”
CU men’s golf team is 3rd place at the Falcon Invitational
Sep 9th
After shooting one of the better final rounds scores, the CU men’s golf team was able to tie for third place in the 45th annual Gene Miranda Air Force Falcon Invitational, which was completed here Monday.
Host Air Force opened the meet with the lowest scoring round in the 15-team field and never looked back, cruising to a 15-under 849 team score. Texas-El Paso grabbed runner-up honors as the only other team under par (861, minus-3), with Colorado and Wyoming sharing third with 3-over 867 scores. Nevada rounded out the top five with an 869 total.
The Buffaloes had entered the tournament as its two-time defending champion, including running away with the 2012 event by 12 strokes. Colorado had it at one time 7-under par on Monday, but lost a few strokes over the last six holes and settled for the third-place tie.
“We played good, not great, and many of the teams in the tournament are a lot better than they’ve been,” CU head coach Roy Edwards said. “This might be the best Air Force team I’ve ever seen, and congratulations to them. I thought the course played a little more difficult than it did last year when we won at 12-under, and they bettered that by three shots. Kyle Westmoreland (AFA’s number one) could play for any team in the country.”
Westmoreland led from wire-to-wire in posting three rounds in the 60s en route to a 12-under 204, which was good for a five-stroke victory on the 7,408-yard, par-72 Eisenhower Blue Golf Course.
Freshman Ethan Freeman led all seven Buffaloes who played here, though he competed as an individual meaning his score did not count toward the CU team total (he was not one of the top five qualifiers). However, thanks to a 3-under par 69 in the final round which saw him score seven birdies, the Kent Denver graduate’s 1-under 215 total tied for the third-lowest score by a CU player in his first major tournament in school history. That effort trailed onlyJonathan Kaye, who recorded a 213 (+3) in the 1990 Wyoming Invitational, and Sebastian Heisele’s 2-under 214 in the 2008 Denver-Ron Moore Invitational.
“This was a really good start for Ethan. He’s a very consistent player and we’re happy he had this kind of good start for his career. The other two freshmen also did nice jobs, no real freshman jitters that I saw.”
(That conjured up a story from the 1980s when Charlie Luther’s first career tee shot hit a tree and wound up a few yards behind the tee box. Then-CU head coach, the late Mark Simpson, comforted Charlie by telling him, “That’s okay, Charlie. Even Tony Dorsett lost yardage on his first collegiate carry.”)
Freeman tied for 10th place in the 88-man field, finishing his first collegiate event with 12 birdies (sixth-most in the field) and 31 pars against 11 bogeys on a challenging course that has the capability of eating young golfers up; he also tied for fifth in par-4 scoring, playing those 30 holes at 2-under. The last freshman to lead the Buffaloes in a season opening tournament was Derek Tolan, who tied for eighth in the 2005 New Mexico Tucker Invitational (2-under 214); Tolan was a redshirt frosh: the last true freshman to pace CU was Rick Cramer, who had a 1-over 217 for third place overall finish in the 1979 AFA Falcon invite.
Sophomore Drew Trujillo and freshman Yannik Paul both tied for 16th, as each finished up with 1-under 71s for a 1-over 217. Trujillo had a steady round that included an eagle (on the par-5 No. 9), a birdie and 14 pars, while Paul scored six birdies in his final round, giving him 14 for the tourney, second-most in the field.
Senior Johnny Hayes and freshman Jeremy Paul tied for 25th with 3-over par 219 totals. Hayes also played here as an individual and closed with a 4-over 76; his 38 pars led the Buffs here and tied for the seventh-most in the meet. Paul, one minute older than his twin sibling, finished with a 1-over 73; he had CU’s other eagle in the meet, which came in the first round.
Junior David Oraee got back on track Monday after two over-par rounds, as he fashioned a 2-under 70 to wrap things up with a 221 score (tying him for 37th). He had 11 bogeys the first two rounds but shaved that down to two in the final round, though they did come on his last two holes of the day, otherwise he would have had a round in the 60s.
Sophomore Philip Juel-Berg closed with a 1-over 73, giving him a 223 total which tied him for 45th. Though he tied for 19th in the field with 10 birdies over the three rounds, and his 10-shot improvement from his first to second round (80-70) was the best in the field from one round to the next.
“We’re not overly happy with the result, and despite being just 3-over par as a team, there’s much room for improvement,” Edwards said. “But it’s still a solid start. The positives today were that nobody in the starting five made worse than bogey on a hole, and we did a lot better job of managing our games.”
The Buffaloes will resume play in two weeks in the fourth annual Mark Simpson-CU Invitational, set for September 23-24 at Colorado National Golf Club in Erie.
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Boulder, the country and the world mourn the death of population advocate professor Al Bartlett
Sep 9th
Albert Allen Bartlett, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, was remembered today as a revered teacher who had a major impact on his students, the university, Boulder and far beyond.
Bartlett died on Sept. 7 at the age of 90.
“Al Bartlett was a man of many legacies,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. “His commitment to students was evidenced by the fact that he continued to teach for years after his retirement. His timeless, internationally revered lecture on the impacts of world population growth will live beyond his passing, a distinction few professors can claim. And we can all be thankful for his vision and foresight in making the Boulder community what it is today.”
Paul Beale, chair of the CU-Boulder Department of Physics, said “Al Bartlett was a treasured friend, mentor, teacher, scholar and public servant. He was an influential leader in the Department of Physics, the university, the Boulder community and the global environmental movement. Generations of students were proud to have called him ‘Professor.’ ”
Bartlett started teaching at CU-Boulder in 1950 and retired in 1988 but continued to teach CU students for many years afterward. He is a former president of the American Association of Physics Teachers.
When Bartlett first delivered his internationally celebrated lecture on “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” to a group of CU students on Sept. 19, 1969, the world population was about 3.7 billion. He proceeded to give it another 1,741 times in 49 states and seven other countries to corporations, government agencies, professional groups and students from junior high school through college.
His talk warned of the consequences of “ordinary, steady growth” of population and the connection between population growth and energy consumption. Understanding the mathematical consequences of population growth and energy consumption can help clarify the best course for humanity to follow, he said.
The talk contained his most celebrated statement: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” A video of his lecture posted on YouTube has been viewed nearly 5 million times.
This year, the world population is about 7.1 billion and the CU Environmental Center announced a program this summer in which 50 student and community volunteers received training in exchange for a commitment to give Bartlett’s talk at least three times in 2013-14.
Bartlett was a dedicated teacher who reveled in finding better ways to reach his students, whether it was the use of 1-inch diameter railroad chalk that could more easily be seen on a blackboard or the design of a new physics lecture hall. He served on the Boulder Campus Planning Commission for 25 years and chaired the faculty committee responsible for designing the building currently housing the Department of Physics and the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences.
He and Professor Frank C. Walz designed physics lecture halls for the Duane Physical Laboratories Complex that included the innovation of rotating stages. The stages allowed scientific demonstrations to be in use during one class while they were being set up for the next — a process that might take three times as long as the 10 minute period between classes.
In addition to his university work, Bartlett also was a prominent and influential member of the Boulder community. He was an initiator of the effort to preserve Boulder’s open space and also the “Blue Line” amendment that kept houses from being built farther up Boulder’s foothills by restricting the city water supply to a maximum elevation.
As the Daily Camera newspaper wrote when Bartlett received its Pacesetter Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006, “Albert Bartlett’s influence is unmistakable in the foothills surrounding Boulder. With few exceptions, one sees trees, grasses and rock.”
Throughout his decades as a Boulder resident he also was a prodigious writer of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor on a variety of civic and scientific issues.
Bartlett was born on March 21, 1923, in Shanghai, China. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Colgate University and spent two years as an experimental physicist at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico as part of the Manhattan Project before earning his graduate degrees in physics at Harvard. He then started his teaching career at CU-Boulder.
He won the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Distinguished Service Citation, the Robert A. Millikan Award and the Melba Newell Phillips Award, and served as the society’s national president in 1978. Teaching and service awards from the University of Colorado include Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence in Teaching Awards, the Robert L. Stearns Award, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the University of Colorado Centennial Medallion, the President’s University Service Award, the University Heritage Center Award and the Presidential Citation.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Eleanor, and is survived by their four daughters — Carol, Jane, Lois and Nancy.
A memorial service was being planned to be held in Boulder in October.
The Albert A. Bartlett Scholarship was established in 2010 to aid CU-Boulder physics students who plan to pursue careers teaching high school science. Before his death, Bartlett requested that any memorial gifts be made to the University of Colorado Foundation Albert A. Bartlett Scholarship Fund, in care of the Department of Physics, 390 UCB, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309.
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