As concussion awareness grows, fewer players sign up

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Although the rules and regulations of junior-league football have restrictions to help prevent a child from being injured, the president of the Glen Ridge Athletic Association, Rick Foster, said fielding a team is getting harder because of parental concerns.

“We’re having problems with numbers,” Foster said Saturday, Nov. 5, at Washington Field, during the Pee-Wee Championship game won by Glen Ridge Red Dogs. “We weren’t able to field a seventh-grade team this year. It has to do, I think, with concussion protocol. The high school team only has 30 kids on the varsity.”

In football, offense and defensive teams play against each other with 11 players to the side. A standard football field is 100 yards from goal line to goal line, and 53 ⅓ yards in width.

The Red Dogs, made up of third- and fourth-graders, play on a field 80 yards long and 40 yards wide. The team plays eight-minute quarters unlike the high school team which plays 12-minute quarters.

Contact in practice is also limited to prevent injuries, Foster said. The Red Dogs practice three times a week but only once with helmets.
Foster mentioned another precaution.

“If a kid is over 85 pounds, he can’t handle the ball in a game,” he said.
This rule would prevent heavier children, playing quarterback, running back or receiver, from colliding with smaller children trying to tackle them.

Foster said special helmets are in use by the Red Dogs and their coaches have been given training to deal with injuries.

“If a boy may have a concussion, he goes to a doctor and the doctor determines if he should play,” Foster said.
Joe Auborn, the GRAA co-commissioner, said he read in The New York Times that football registrations are down nationally 30 percent.

“Our program is in that area,” he said.
Glen Ridge football starts in first grade with first- and second-graders playing flag-football. In flag football, ball carriers have a piece of material attached to their clothing that a defensive player grabs away to stop the advance of the ball. The GRAA co-commissioner, Jelai Kamil, said he is open to the idea of girls and boys playing flag-football together.

Tackle football begins with a team of third- and fourth-grade boys. Fifth- and sixth-graders play together as do seventh- and eighth-graders.
The Glen Ridge Pee-Wee team plays in the Bergen County Junior Football League. The team this year had

20 players. Last year, a team from Montvale had only 12 players. They were able to field a team because junior league players, like high school players, can play both defense and offense in the same game.

“They said they wouldn’t do that again,” Auborn said of the Montvale team.
The Red Dogs were started in 1997 by Jim Lopes. The top Pee-Wee player, at the end of the season, receives the Jim Lopes Award. This year’s championship team went undefeated as did last year’s championship team. On Saturday, they defeated Dumont, 27-12.

Auborn said that until 2015, the last Pee-Wee championship team was in 2008. Some of the players from that team are now junior and senior varsity players at the high school, he said.

“Football is a sport that is really getting beaten up right now,” he said. “Four years ago, we did a fundraiser for top helmets.”

The traditional football helmet, he said, protected the head with foam. The newer helmets have an air pad that deflated a little upon impact. The fundraiser raised $20,000 for the new head gear.

Auborn said there is no medical personnel at Pee-Wee games but the police and EMS could be at the field within three minutes.

But Auborn and Foster said there were no reported concussions among the Red Dogs this year.

“It’ll grow again,” Auborn said of football registrations. “Our numbers are going back up. They match the national average.”