PROTECT AGAINST ABDOMINAL INJURIES IN YOUTH FOOTBALL
Abdominal injuries in football, particularly youth football, are more common than most people realize. They can cause serious damage to the ribs, spleen, liver and other organs, and they have even led to death for some. Our country is not taking these risks seriously enough.
By joining the Taylor Haugen Foundation’s national #PledgetoProtect campaign, you are potentially saving lives and encouraging action for better, more-widespread protection to prevent these traumatic injuries.
THE PLEDGE TO PROTECT
- By always wearing or ensuring proper abdominal protection, and by regularly checking for proper equipment coverage and fit.
- By talking about what abdominal injuries are, how they occur, and the severe risks they pose.
- By making sure that youth football players are receiving the most advanced instruction possible on tackling, blocking and other techniques, to protect against potential abdominal injuries.
- By confirming that a dedicated emergency medical service is readily available and on the sideline at every game and practice.
- By promoting open communication among players, parents and coaches about the football safety protocols that are in place, and by ensuring those protocols are being taken seriously.
- By encouraging those who regulate or supervise youth football, such as legislators, athletic associations and school system administrators, to make abdominal protection equipment standard throughout the United States by 2028.
As the nation’s leading advocate of abdominal injury prevention and protection for secondary school athletes, the Taylor Haugen Foundation seeks to make abdominal protection gear standard for youth football within the next decade, while ensuring safer play on the gridiron today.
The Foundation, which was created in memory of high school sophomore Taylor Haugen, who at age 15 died of an abdominal injury suffered while playing the game he loved, is the only known nonprofit organization in the country dealing solely with this recurring injury.
The Taylor Haugen Foundation is a member of the Youth Sports Safety Alliance and works closely with the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The organization also receives support from the Andrews Institute for Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, in Gulf Breeze, Florida.