Michigan is collecting data to try and solve its high school concussion problem

This year, the Michigan High School Athletic Association wanted to know more about concussions that their student-athletes might suffer. So, they asked about it — and 99 percent of their member schools have responded.

The association requested that schools report possible concussions that happened during practice and games, according to a news release on the project. At the end of the fall sports season, 744 high schools had provided data.

“This ventures into new territory,” MHSAA communications director John Johnson told MLive.com. “Never has there been such a project undertaken to try to find out what the occurrences of head injuries are. A lot of your data previously is based on incidents that are reported at medical centers. Never have you told 750 schools, ‘Okay, tell us about every head injury.’ When 99 percent of them respond, that gives you a working sample like no other.

“This gives us a baseline we can start to build on and over time it will start to reveal the trends and the things that need to be addressed.”

Some of the data hasn’t been verified yet, but here’s what MHSAA found, via the news release:

Preliminary data from the fall season shows two percent of more than 100,000 high school athletes experienced concussions, and 27 percent of high schools responding reported that none of their athletes experienced concussions while participating in MHSAA sports.

You’re probably wondering how many of those concussions were reported for football players? Here’s more on that, from the association release (I’ve bolded the bit on football, to make that easier):

The average number of concussions reported by member high schools through Dec. 4, 2015, was 3.2 concussions per school. Fifty-two percent of reporting schools stated they had two or fewer concussions by athletes this fall.

Football, the fall season’s most-played sport with 39 percent of all fall participants, revealed 79 percent of all concussions reported for the season. Boys soccer, with nearly 14 percent of fall sport participants, revealed 11 percent of all concussions reported.

“We’ve got a unique opportunity here and schools have seized upon it,” Johnson told MLive.com earlier this month. “We expect that we’ve set the bar high and schools will help us grab the bar every time, every season now that we continue to build on that information.”

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