Danger on the football field: Many states are still failing high school athletes

My son's high school football career is over, and I couldn't be more relieved

Football among brain scans.
(Image credit: Illustration | bekisha/iStock, Gearstd/iStock)

My son's high school football team ended its season with a 2-8 record, finishing second-to-last in its Southern California league. I'm sure he would have liked his football career to end differently. But I was simply glad to see it come to a close.

As any parent of an athlete knows, playing sports carries certain risks. In the case of football, some of those risks have gotten prominent coverage over the last few years, and rightly so. Tackle football dominates at the high school level, with more than 1 million boys playing the sport and more than 14,000 schools around the country fielding teams. Yet despite many high-profile cases of injury, too many schools still lack critical safety policies to help keep high school athletes from being seriously injured. Even though football may be "as safe as it ever has been," that doesn't mean it's actually safe.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Lisa L. Lewis

Lisa Lewis is a Southern-California-based freelance journalist who writes frequently about the intersection of public health, adolescence, and education. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Slate, among others.