Basic numbers and the basics of Mia's story

There are between an estimated 1.6 and 3.8 million sports related concussions in the US every year. High school students sustain an estimated 136,000 to 300,000 concussions. Athletes ages 16-19 sustain 29% of all sports- related concussions every year. A 2012 study of 20 high school sports reported that concussions accounted for 13.2% of all injuries in the sports studied, 66.6% of which occurred during competition and 33.4% during practice (www.momsteam.com).

Now that you have some statistics concussions I want you to think about those numbers for a second. Now I will tell you Mia’s story, Mia was a high school student at Rowe High School. In a college scholarship soccer game she got a concussion and was knocked unconscious for a while. This was over a year ago and she has still not recovered. She will probably not recover for a very long time, possibly the rest of her life. She had had three concussions that week. She had had one in practice on Monday, then one in the first half of the tournament and then 10-15 minutes into the second half she fell down hit her head on the ground and was knocked unconscious. I will be getting into the details and the story from other perspectives in my next few posts (www.classroomlawproject.org).