Soccer players have less risk of concussion injuries

Whitman High’s boys soccer coach, Dave Greene, agreed.

‘‘Considering contact is a prevalent, we do not see concussions a lot,” Greene said. ‘‘The head is not an integral part to stop somebody, it is just another way to move the ball.”

Yet, the action of heading the ball — striking it out of the air with a player’s head to move it forward — is something that physicians have looked at as a cause for potential brain injuries like concussions. A study by John Adams at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine in the July 2007 issue, showed that brain scans of 10 college-age soccer players showed evidence of reduced gray matter — the tissue in the brain that controls thinking and memory — than that of 10 college-age non-soccer players. The reduced gray matter was seen in a part of the brain called the anterior temporal cortex, the part most vulnerable to repeated knocks to the front of the head. However, only two of the 10 college soccer players studied reported a mild concussion in the past and none reported a history of serious head injuries. In Boden’s study, while concussions were found to be more common than originally thought, the most frequent cause of a concussion was a collision with another player. No concussions resulted from a player heading the ball.

‘‘We’ve set up studies with U.S. Soccer, and administered tests to the players using the ImPACT [cognitive testing] program,” Boden, who is a member of the U.S. Soccer medical staff and has served as a team physician for the men’s U-20 national team, said. ‘‘But, it will be 10 years or so before we can draw any conclusions. No one has yet proven that heading the ball causes concussions or any long-term damage.”

Greene, who spent a lifetime playing and coaching soccer, says that heading the ball is not something that soccer players spend a lot of time doing, on or off the field. And, products design to lessen the impact of heading the ball, like headbands that have padding at the forehead, are not all that significant.

‘‘I’ve never had an injury [to a player] from heading the ball or doing it too much,” Greene said. ‘‘Its not like they are heading a ball coming at them at 70 miles an hour. Especially when players are juggling the ball with their heads, you’re talking about the ball moving at two miles an hour.”

Even the authors of the University of Cincinnati report are skeptical of any link between heading and brain injury. More research is needed to examine the long-term brain injury risks associated with soccer.

‘‘I’d be very reluctant to ascribe [the results] purely to heading,” Dr. Caleb Adler told the Reuters News Service. Adler is a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the University of Cincinnati. He also said soccer is not an ‘‘entirely benign sport, any activity is a balance of risk and benefits.”