Youth football league coaches from Middle Tennessee and beyond received helpful information on concussion prevention and treatment July 13 at Saint Thomas Sports Park. The Tennessee Titans served as a host site for USA Football’s Heads Up Football Player Safety Coach Clinic. The daylong workshop included sessions on properly fitting helmets and shoulder pads, a discussion on concussion awareness and demonstrations on Heads Up tackling training and drills.
USA Football master trainer Chuck Kyle taught methods designed to reduce the likelihood of concussions.
“The concussion issue is here and it’s very strong, and certainly the spotlight, whether right or wrong, is on football right now,” Kyle said. “Other sports have concussions, plenty of them, but the spotlight is on football. More than 30 representatives from youth leagues attended the clinic and will be able to take what they learned and teach other coaches and parents of the players so that proper tackling techniques become habitual at early ages.
“If football solves it, every other sport is going to benefit,” Kyle said. “Every other sport is going, ‘Please, football. You have the resources—the NFL has the resources to research and get programs like Heads Up Football to teach people,’ and USA Volleyball and USA Basketball are going, ‘Please, football, and then we’ll copy what you do,’ so what we’re doing is not just for football. It’s for everything, and we’ve got to get moving on that and then help parents understand.”
Kyle views the Heads Up Football initiative between USA Football and the NFL as a way to pass the game to future generations and a way that the sport can take information it learns and pass it along to other sports that also experience concussions.
“You start with the young kids and work your way up because right now, if you start messing with a professional athlete and the way he tackles, he’s going to say, ‘Excuse me, I’ve got a family to feed. I’m going to do what got me here,’ and really that’s going to be the reaction,” Kyle said. “You hope they listen to it and have the confidence that, ‘I’m still a great athlete. I’m going to show people how to do this,’ but we’re starting with youth and building it up.”
Titans single game tickets available
Single game tickets to all 10 Tennessee Titans home games at LP Field are now on sale. Tickets can be purchased by visiting the Ticket Office at LP Field, calling Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000, visiting any Ticketmaster outlet, or logging on to the Ticketmaster website at Ticketmaster.com. Individual game tickets start at $36.
The Titans regular season schedule features home games against Kansas City, San Diego, Arizona, San Francisco, New York Jets, Houston, Indianapolis and Jacksonville. Tennessee hosts Washington and Atlanta in the preseason, and opens its home schedule on September 22 against San Diego.
