AIA plan will require opioids education for student-athletes
It’s a start, and something the Arizona Interscholastic Association hopes will save lives.
In June, the AIA will launch a 20minute video course to educate studentathletes on opioids, according to David Hines, executive director of the AIA.
Hines said that beginning the 202021 academic year all student-athletes will be required to complete either the AIA course or one through the Arizona Department of Health Services in order to be eligible to compete.
Beginning the 2021-22 school year, all athletes will have to complete the AIA opioids education course, Hines said.
Hines said it’s important for the AIA to get in front of the opioids crisis that is killing teens and young adults across the country.
With injuries coming from sports, pain killers are often prescribed by doctors. That can lead to addiction, overdose, and death. Fentanyl is found in counterfeit opioids that are 50 to 100 percent more powerful than morphine.
“We developed a course like ‘Brainbook’ (on concussions) that would satisfy the (state) Legislature,” Hines said. “We got a grant through the Maricopa County Department of Health. It was to produce an opioids education program or course.”
Hines said part of the tool will be animated, and aimed at the injured athlete, the mom, the doctor, and the prescriptions with explanations on what are opioids and how they become addictive, and what are alternatives.
Like Brainbook, an online course that is brought to high school athletes through the AIA, the Arizona Cardinals, Arizona State University and Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, the opioids online course is mandatory for all student-athletes and only has to be completed once in their high school career, Hines said.
Coaches were supportive of the effort
“One year is not enough,” Chinle football coach Alan Barwick said. “This should be required each year.”
Winslow football coach Brandon Guzman said he had a 2019 graduate die from a fentanyl overdose.
On March 3, at Winslow High School, there will be a Town Hall meeting hosted by the Winslow Police Department and Winslow Junior High on the dangers of opioids. Winslow Police Department posted on its Facebook page about the reasons behind the event, which also will feature experts on the topic:
“I am reaching out to all of you regarding an upcoming Town Hall Meeting to address the recent opioid related overdoses in our region,” Police Chief Daniel J. Brown wrote in the post. “Over the course of the last three weeks here in Winslow, we have had four overdoses. In three of these cases, Winslow Police Officers administered Naloxone which saved the lives of three young adults.”
Brown said the fourth, an 18 year-old male, died and is believed to have overdosed on fentanyl. The ages of all four victims were between 16 and 20 years old, he said.
“We must educate our citizens quickly to avoid losing more lives,” Brown wrote.
Young athletes lost to opioids
Last April, The Arizona Republic wrote about how fentanyl ended up killing former Chandler football player Danny Mahan, who overdosed on Jan. 2, 2019, in his family’s home. He had been struggling from addiction to pain killers and was released from a rehab facility in Prescott after 55 days to spend the holidays with his family.
In May 2018, the week Buckeye Verrado was to play Scottsdale Notre Dame in the state baseball semifinals, 17-year-old Verrado pitcher Bryan McKinsey died from fentanyl overdose, according to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s report.
“As a high school coach of 25 years, an educator and a father of two student-athletes, I absolutely support the implementation and requirement of an opioids awareness course for athletes,” Phoenix Greenway football coach Ed Cook said.
“I’ve experienced successes on the field and have watched my athletes move on to compete at the collegiate level,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have also stood in a hospital hallway as a family learned their son, my athlete, had no brain activity after a drug overdose and would be removed from life support.”
Cook added, “A course like this would provide one more resource, one more line of defense, one more opportunity to save a life.”
Bryan Begay, who leads the Monument Valley football program on the Navajo Nation in Kayenta, said what the AIA is requiring is important, especially for kids on the reservation, where the overdose rates are high.
The Indian Health Service web site says, “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations had the second highest overdose rates from all opioids in 2017 (15.7 deaths/100,000 population) among racial/ethnic groups in the U.S.”
Begay said the 20-minute AIA course “will not only help our community but help inform our opioids overdose surveillance and help address the opioids crisis in tribal communities.”
Training for more topics?
Gilbert Christian football coach Danny Norris calls this an important step by the AIA.
“We need to do much better as coaches, parents, friends, family and entire communities in protecting our young adults from the dangers of opioid addiction and prescription medication abuse,” Norris said. “I am incredibly happy that the AIA is taking these steps.
Gilbert Perry football coach Preston Jones agrees it’s a good program for the AIA to start, especially with conversations among kids about opioids becoming more prominent on high school campuses.
“I would much rather our high school student-athletes be educated about opioids from adult professionals with science-based facts rather than a teenager sitting in the back of a classroom,” he said.
Schools have more than opioids as an issue confronting teens and parents. They also are dealing with vaping and cyber bullying, issues that some feel the AIA must also get in front of to better protect kids.
“I don’t have an issue with more education on various topics in order to be cleared by the AIA,” said Gilbert Mesquite football coach Scott Hare, who previously served as the school’s athletic director
“I know there is an opioid crisis in America, but currently if they are going to produce a drug prevention campaign, I hope they add vaping,” he said, adding that could prove to be a larger health problem for young people over time.
Hines, a former athletic director at Mesa Mountain View, understands this mandatory opioids course for student-athletes is adding one more thing on an athletic director’s plate. But he has not heard any negative feedback.
“We don’t want anybody to get hurt playing a sport,” Hines said, “but we don’t want to lose anybody. If we can do our part and save someone, that’s great.”
To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter @azc_obert.
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