(L-R) Dr. Mayrena Hernandez, Mike Locksley, Dr. Marci Goolsby and Dr. Vince Minjares at Project Play Summit 2024, May 15 in Baltimore.
*Photo: Howard Korn for the Aspen Institute*

Project Play Summit 2024 Student Recaps

Providing qualified athletic trainers to secondary schools, reducing potentially career-ending knee injuries through neuromuscular training, and paying attention to the mental health of athletes were discussed during a Project Play Summit panel on health equity in youth sports.

Dr. Mayrena Hernandez, director of the Healthy Activity Toward Promoting Injury Reduction (HAPIR) Lab, stressed the importance of athletic trainers in youth sports. Only 1 in 3 U.S. high schools employ a full-time athletic trainer.

“Athletic trainers, especially in the secondary school setting, are at an optimal intersection in public health,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez explained that athletic trainers serve as a “resource hub” for those working in the school system, while representing athletes and their families in order to receive the healthcare they need. Hernandez, who works in Huntsville, Texas, supports programs such as Team HEAL, a Los Angeles-based initiative that employs hospital systems to provide full-time athletic trainers to high schools. The trainers in this program also teach in the schools they serve, allowing opportunities for students interested in athletic training to receive professional experience.

Access to athletic trainers is only half the battle. ACL injuries have increased by 26% since 2007. This uptick is more pronounced in girls sports, with a higher rate of ACL injuries occurring in girls soccer than tackle football.

Over half of the athletes who suffer ACL injuries never return to their sport, according to Dr. Marci Goolsby, medical director of Women’s Sports Medicine at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). This can be detrimental to athletes’ overall well-being.

“They lose that identity, they lose their social network in a lot of ways when they’re out of sport,” Goolsby said.

Fortunately, neuromuscular training has emerged as a way to reduce the likelihood of these devastating injuries. Neuromuscular training instructs athletes on different movement patterns with the goal of preventing non-contact injuries.

HSS developed an app called RIIP Reps, an evidence-based, expert-led free curriculum to reduce injuries and improve performance. The app assigns neuromuscular exercises to athletes and does not require any specific training or special equipment.

“We’re really excited about that app and its opportunity to be more impactful, hopefully,” Goolsby said.

Mental health was also a focus of the discussion, a topic especially important to University of Maryland football coach Mike Locksley. In 2017, Locksley’s son, Meiko, was shot and killed. Meiko struggled with mental health issues, and since his death, Locksley has prioritized mental health when coaching.

“It’s really important to create a safe environment where mental health is real,” he said.

When Locksley was hired as head coach in 2019, Maryland’s football team was reeling from the death of Jordan McNair, a former player who died after collapsing during a team practice. Locksley recalled seeing a certain look in the eyes of players he has coached throughout his career, a look that he saw in his son. He now understands that this look often reveals a struggle with mental health.

“It's that look where you can almost see a person’s soul,” Locksley said. “I’ve had a lot of football players over my 34 years (of coaching) that I’ve seen that look, but didn’t recognize it.”

Maryland’s football team now adopts an “open-door policy” regarding mental health, and has hired additional mental health professionals since Locksley became head coach. Locksley also supports a bill recently signed by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore that requires Maryland public high school and college coaches to be trained to recognize signs of mental illness, including depression, trauma, violence, substance abuse or self-harm.

Having seen battles with mental health in his own family and players, Locksley now is an advocate for coaches to adopt a similar environment that he is building at Maryland.

“We embrace it. We make it easy to come and talk about it.”

Student journalists from the University of Maryland’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism covered the Project Play Summit on behalf of the Aspen Institute. More of their stories can be found here. For Project Play’s recap of the Summit, click here. For the full Summit agenda, including replays of every session, click here. The full “Health Equity in Youth Sports” panel can be found here.