Football New Brunswick runs several programs in an effort to prevent injuries including the recent launch of a pilot study to help to track how many players are getting hurt in minor football.
Executive Director Josh Harris says they currently have a handful of coaches tracking injuries.
“We only have three or four coaches piloting it because we do think that probably more changes will be needed to it, so we’re just going through the early stages of it,” says Harris. “Once we get that feedback from the coaches that are piloting this tracking form our intention is by next Fall to have it provincial wide so that we’re tracking all injuries.”
Harris says they collect lots of data including “the age of the participant, whether they are male or female, whether the injury occurred during a practice, or a game, whether they were receiving the contact or delivering the contact.”
He adds getting as much data as they can will help them better understand where injuries are occurring.
Harris says once they are tracking all the provincial data on injuries, it will likely take two to three years before any solid trends become apparent.
