It is no doubt that athletes are getting bigger, faster, and stronger as the year’s progress. This is leading to more physical and faster gameplay, especially in high contact sports like football and hockey. It should be mandatory that all high school athletes, no matter what the sport or gender, take a concussion test providing a baseline score to help diagnose concussions, the severity of the injury, and recovery time.
A new form of technology was released around five years ago; however, not enough high schools in America are putting it to use. This is known as ImPACT Testing. It was invented to provide a baseline score of one’s cognitive abilities before and after a concussion. ImPACT does not test students over math equations or grammar problems; it simply measures things like verbal and visual memory, processing speed, and reaction time. Although many schools have put this to use it is not a requirement. This needs to change, concussions are extremely serious and they are not necessarily an injury that can be seen heal, unlike a scratch or bruise. If this was a requirement, it would assist physicians in making the difficult decision on when it is okay for the student-athlete to return to action with
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ImPACT Test released this statement “ImPACT is very affordable. In fact, the cost of the program for an entire school is equivalent to the cost of a few football helmets. ImPACT was created with the goal of making the program affordable for any school or organization” (Impact Testing). It has been proven that this would not be hard to fit into a school’s budget and by making it mandatory schools will have to either slightly rearrange their budget, make a few small cuts, and at extreme measures do a little bit of fundraising which would be very rare. It would be easily attainable to add this important safety precaution to all high