Sports shorts Pop Warner starts concussion program

Pop Warner, the country’s largest youth football program, is implementing a concussion-awareness initiative aimed at educating young athletes about how to recognize symptoms of a head injury.

The program is called CrashCourse and was developed with Stanford University education, engineering and medical researchers. It uses an interactive online video of a high school football game and a symptoms simulator.

Pop Warner has 325,000 participants in its youth football leagues, including cheerleading and dance, with about 225,000 players. Pop Warner officials plan to promote and encourage use of the program to its coaches and local leagues organizers through social media and email.

In recent years, Pop Warner has modified its rules to limit contact to no more than 25 percent of practice time and eliminate kickoffs for certain age groups. Sweden’s Olympic leaders have tried to assure Stockholm’s newly formed local government that the city’s taxpayers will not be asked to foot the bill for the 2026 Winter Games.

Stockholm’s bid to host the games is at risk after lawmakers in the new coalition running the city highlighted their concerns about spending taxpayer money on the event.

Mats Arjes, chairman of the Swedish Olympic Committee, says “we have not approached the notion of tax-based funding or any financial guarantees whatsoever” for the operating costs of the games. He says the only financial guarantee required would be for “national security,” which was already tax funded.

Stockholm’s bid team says 90 percent of the venues that would be used for the games already exist, and that only a new ice rink and a skiing venue need to be built.

There are two other candidates for the 2026 Olympics: Calgary, Canada, and the combined Italian bid of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. A vote of IOC members is scheduled in June.

The Women’s Tennis Association said Thursday that No. 1-ranked Simona Halep has withdrawn from the WTA Finals because of a lower back injury.

Halep’s withdrawal means Kiki Bertens has qualified for the final spot, joining Angelique Kerber, Naomi Osaka, Petra Kvitova, Caroline Wozniacki, Sloane Stephens, Karolina Pliskova and Elina Svitolina in Singapore for the $7 million tournament from Oct. 21-28.

“Unfortunately, after much discussion with my team and doctors, I have made the decision to withdraw,” Halep said. “I wanted to finish 2018 on a high after such an incredible year, but sadly my back injury hasn’t healed the way we hoped it would and I need to put my longterm health first.”