Player Safety

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Player Safety Must Come Before Toughness When coaching sports, football in particular, there can be a very fine line between being a disciplinary coach and being too tough on players. This can be especially true when coaching High School athletes where many coaches who are trying to be hard on players are being accused as unfair to their players. Today there is an ethical dilemma between being a very disciplinary coach and mistreating student athletes. Player’s safety should be taken into consideration even when coaches have an extremely disciplinarian approach to coaching. An ethical dilemma can arise in practice every day. There are coaches who often deny athletes water breaks, grab facemasks to demonstrate dominance, and make players run …show more content…

If I was in this coach’s situation I would want to focus on player safety. In this particular situation when punishment arises I would not want to punish my athletes in a way that could harm their personal health. I do not think that it is appropriate to deny athletes water breaks. I do not agree that players should risk dehydration just to show that I am a tough coach. I would want player health and safety to be my top priority. According to an article titled “The Drinking Problem in Youth Sports” on the National Allicance for Youth Sports Website, “Teens should drink 5 or 6 cups of water or sports drink each hour. Frequency of fluid breaks are not specified for teens, but it is reasonable to offer 2 to 3 drinking breaks per hour to ensure adequate fluid consumption”. This shows that it is extremely important for coaches to allow and make sure that their young athlete are getting enough fluids no matter the situation. Making students run in the heat until they are close to heat exhaustion is something that I would also avoid as a coach. I think that it can be appropriate to have students to run as a punishment, because it can help become a more conditioned athlete. I do have a problem with having students run until they are completely exhausted and dangerously close to having heat stress or dehydration. An article produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics titled “Climatic Heat Stress and Exercising Children and Adolescents” stated, “Contrary to previous thinking, youth do not have less effective thermoregulatory ability, insufficient cardiovascular capacity, or lower physical exertion tolerance compared with adults during exercise in the heat when adequate hydration is maintained”. This quote shows that many adults, including coaches, believe that they can be

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