Happy to report that our local schools are getting a clear head about the issue of concussions.

No, the injuries aren’t going away. Despite everyone’s best efforts to teach better technique and promote awareness of the epidemic to every stakeholder in youth sports, I see and hear of more high school athletes getting concussed than ever.

There are only so many preventive measures you can take to battle such an irresistible force as human evolution successfully, after all.

But after years of underestimating the problem, arguing over whose responsibility it was, and explaining it away with euphemisms, schools are exercising caution and common sense.

In other words, the expression, “He got his bell rung” has been stricken from the sideline vernacular, mercifully. Because forget about caution. This is a rare instance where we are well advised to err on the side of alarm.

The message has trickled down successfully from doctors to trainers to administrators to coaches to parents to players: If there is even a remote chance that you have suffered a head injury, take a seat until the proper authorities deem otherwise.

I’m not able to confirm any of this with hard data. I only know what I have witnessed through the first three weeks of this sports season, compared to some of the horror stories that met my eyes and ears in the preceding 25 years.

Injured athletes aren’t being handed a packet of painkiller and sent home with rudimentary instructions to stay in a dark room and avoid visual stimulation. They’re being transported to the nearest hospital for observation. One of our schools sent three students for a more thorough medical assessment after a football game Friday night.

Once treated and released, they aren’t being rushed back into the fray as if the future of democracy depends on it. They’re being given a healing window such as “one to four weeks,” which is so inexact as to be chuckle-inducing, at first, until you recognize that it captures the essence of concussion perfectly.

Severity varies. Healing varies. No two brains are alike, particularly when they’ve been bruised.

Which leads us to a point of crucial importance. Even the word “concussion” is outdated, bandied about by laymen for decades until it was stripped of all its medical meaning.

This is a brain injury, folks, and nothing less. Certainly not dire (we hope) as the type of brain injury that could leave somebody with long-term deficits and incapacities, but still underneath that umbrella.

For too long, post-concussion syndrome was closely associated with the plight of retired National Football League players, who reported such life-altering symptoms as depression, dementia and memory loss in their 40s, 50s and beyond.

But most of us live in the moment. We looked at the healthy outward appearance of teenagers and assumed that their recuperative powers would take care of this out-of-sight, almost-out-of-mind malady in short order. We also created a culture in which it was considered shameful for an athlete to sit out a play, a quarter, or an entire game if he or she didn’t feel quite right. “Is your arm falling off? Well, get back in there, son.”

That was wrong. Dreadfully wrong, in a few extreme cases. Had our minds grasped multiple concussions as being brain injuries, we would have understood that their side effects can include dizziness, light sensitivity, memory loss, inability to concentrate and depression.

Perhaps we could have saved lives. Among them, maybe the life of Jake Lord, the former Jay High School athlete whose suicide in his first semester of college shook his community.

There was no blame assigned. Even young athletes have a degree of autonomy. They want to play, doggone it.

Lord’s survivors didn’t grow bitter. They got constructive. Jake’s sister, Jenna, started the Play It Safe Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to educating schools and communities about these ever-increasing dangers.

This past summer, the foundation donated $12,000 worth of equipment, including 40 Xenith helmets, to the football program at Jay and Livermore Falls’ consolidated high school, Spruce Mountain. The helmets are aimed at reducing the prevalence of concussions by using state-of-the-art, absorbent air cells.

No equipment will prevent concussions, mind you. The laws of physics ensure that. These are big, strong young men playing a fast-moving game in an enclosed space. With proper training and technique, though, helmets and shoulder pads from the cutting edge can help.

Equally helpful, if not even more productive in the long run, is keeping this conversation in the public square. The roster of participants in high school sports turns over completely every four years, and for a million reasons the revolving door of coaches never stops.

There’s no such thing as too much information about this issue. We need to keep discussing what to do before, during and after a young athlete’s head trauma.

Better equipment. Better instruction. Better diagnosis. Better treatment. Better follow-up. Better understanding.

We’ve made great strides. I’ve witnessed it. Until we’ve reduced to its lowest possible point the possibility of a child sacrificing future quality of life for the momentary joy of playing a game, however, we can always do better.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.

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