REDUCING THE DANGER
Football parents donate $2,000 toward concussion safety training
Brody Quinn has been knocked out, temporarily blinded in one eye and hit so hard he had to crawl off the field.
When his parents signed him up for football around age six, they had no idea how dangerous it could be. After his fourth concussion, doctors told him to give up the game. “When Brody was young it was like a free-for-all,” said Lana Quinn, Brody’s mom. “People wanted to see people get laid out. Now people are more aware that’s not what football is about, like just taking somebody down as hard as you can and injuring them for a lifetime.”
Now well aware of the risks, his parents have donated $2,000 to help Windsor Minor Football pay the $12,000 it will cost to get all its coaches up-to-date on mandatory safety training. Football Canada announced last year that all coaches must take Safe Contact training to learn about the latest blocking and tackling techniques. Safe Contact teaches players to tackle by making contact with the chest and front shoulder instead of the head, and blocking by making primary contact with the hands.
The training requirement applies to all coaches, who have a year from the first time they step on the field to get it done. Windsor Minor Football president Paul Horoky doesn’t debate that the training is important. He just questions the cost. He said his organization has 16 teams, each with six coaches. At $125 per coach, he said, the training will cost the non-profit league about $12,000.
“I have no problem having our coaches do this,” said Horoky. “But if it’s that important — and I believe it is that important for the sport going forward to have properly trained coaches — I don’t think the cost should be that high. Especially for non-profit organizations.”
Shannon Donovan, executive director of Football Canada, said the organization only charges $20 for locker fee and administration. The rest of the $125 comes from associations and sports organizations for classroom rentals, materials and facilitators.
“It is similar to other sports who require coach certification of all their coaches and charge players a much higher registration fee,” Donovan said in an email. “Football remains one of the most affordable sports in the country.” Regardless of who is charging it, Horoky said paying out the $12,000 would put Windsor Minor Football in a “bad position.” He said the league’s registration fee has been $200 for the last nine years.
“Looking at a pie chart of where that registration money goes, at the end of the day we’re left with $10 extra per kid from that $200,” said Horoky. “Everything else is swallowed up in the uniforms, for the fields, for the insurance, for the day-to-day operations of the league.”
Horoky said the donation from the Quinn family will be a huge help. The Quinns offered the money hoping to make sure other young players don’t get hurt like their son did.
Lana Quinn said no one talked about those risks when her son was younger.
“I never thought about it,” she said. “It wasn’t as known. You figure Brody played from the time he was six to 19. I think it just started being more known in the last five years what’s happening with these football players.”
Brody said he suffered his first concussion around Grade 7 or 8. The last was during a championship game in his last year at Herman high school.
He slipped while running the ball and took a hard hit to the top of the head. When he stood up, his ears were ringing and he couldn’t see out of his right eye. But he kept going.
“It just progressively got worse,” said Brody. “Every time I ran, moved, it just got worse. I couldn’t see, eyes watering, head was pounding. I just knew it was over. I knew I couldn’t keep going. I remember falling. I was right near the sideline and I remember just crawling off.”
Brody had memory loss for two months. His hopes of getting a scholarship were finished. “The doctor said that’s it, no more football,” said his father Gary, who previously coached for Windsor Minor Football. Regardless of the cost, Brody said the training is vital to keep people from getting hurt. “I believe the awareness needs to be there,” he said. “People should know what’s going on and how to prevent these things.”