Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, the co-chairman of the legislature’s education committee, knows what it is like to get a concussion. <\/p>\n
He played football for Maloney High School in Meriden in the 1970s when he was injured.<\/p>\n
“It was the scariest injury I ever had,” Gaffey said, adding that he was lucky that someone recognized what was wrong.<\/p>\n
Not every coach, however, knows how to deal with head traumas, and they are usually not trained medical professionals, Gaffey said, saying that there is a need to make sure that coaches learn about concussions and that doctors are the ones who diagnose head injuries. <\/p>\n
The education committee held a public hearing Wednesday to hear testimony on a bill that would make sure coaches receive regular training on concussions and the proper treatment for the injury. The training would be part of routine training for coaches and would not result in any extra costs for school districts. <\/p>\n
The bill would also require student athletes to be pulled from intramural and interscholastic athletic competitions if they show signs of a concussion or if they have a concussion. It would require the athletes to get medical clearance before returning to competition if they sustained a head injury or concussion.<\/p>\n
There was wide support for the bill at the hearing. Coaches, athletic trainers and other medical professionals said the bill is needed. <\/p>\n
“It’s time to get serious,” said Julie Peters, executive director of the Brain Injury Association. “It’s time to protect youth from needless disabilities.”<\/p>\n
If the bill passes, Connecticut will become the third state in the country to have a law about concussions and athletics. Oregon and Washington already have such a law. <\/p>\n
Experts say that high school athletes sustain at least 100,000 concussions a year in the United States, and they add that concussions can happen to both boys and girls. It is not just a football injury, he say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, the co-chairman of the legislature’s education committee, knows what it is like to get a concussion. He played football for Maloney High School in Meriden in the 1970s when he was injured. “It was the scariest injury I ever had,” Gaffey said, adding that he was lucky that someone recognized what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}