Head Injuries In Youth Soccer

Not many people know but heading the ball while playing soccer can cause risk to one’s health in the long run. That is why people are looking to ban heading the ball in youth soccer. Heading the ball can cause mild or severe head trauma, there are many ways to prevent someone from getting injured from heading or trying to head the ball, and numerous of organizations are trying to ban heading in youth soccer as a whole. A plethora of people think soccer is an easy going sport that does not have many injuries, but that is almost the complete opposite. Body injuries occur a lot in soccer but one bodily injury that is not looked upon as much in soccer is head injuries. It is not necessarily heading the ball is what causes mild or brain trauma

Head injuries are on the top of the list of injuries that parents do not want their children to have. Not necessarily young soccer players will get injured playing the game and there are ways to prevent these injuries from happening without changing the rules of soccer. Defenders and goalkeepers are at greatest risk of suffering a concussion than other players. Defenders because they head the ball 70% more than other players and go up to challenge for headers with their opponents more. Goalkeepers because when they save a ball from the forwards feet they have to dive in head first to receive the ball from their feet and also when they make diving saves and they have to slide across the goal, they sometimes might hit their head on the goal post. Protective head gear is often worn by plays who have gotten a concussion before and they wear it in games for safety reason, but there is no reason why someone who has not gotten a concussion before cannot wear protective head gear to prevent themselves from getting a concussion. Head gear provides padding around the forehead of the player where they are supposed to head the ball. Actually, damaging head injuries like concussion come from a hard surface hitting anywhere on the head, like as two players going for the same ball in the air. When the two player’s heads collide, one or both might get a concussion, but the contact area is usually not where the player would head the ball. A lot of head injuries happen when an elbow hits the opponent on the side of their head. There are also a number of head-to-nose or -chin contacts in which a player shorter or under their opponent jumps up and hits the player behind them under their chin, causing a whiplash type of injury. Head injuries from hitting the ground often occur a lot. There is not a product currently on the market that would protect players from