HEWITT, West Virginia — Ryan Craddock has experienced many tragedies in his twenty-year career as a miner and firefighter.
Then came the worst sorrow of all: his own sorrow.
Craddock and his family are mourning the loss of his 13-year-old son, Cohen, who died of brain injury last month after making a tackle during football practice at his high school.
Cohen’s death and the death of a 16-year-old high school player of a brain injury in Alabama on the same day, have sparked renewed debate over whether the safety risks of young people playing American football outweigh the benefits the sport brings to a community.
“I don’t think we should abolish football,” Craddock said. “A lot of people love football, myself included. I just think we need to maybe put more safety measures in place to protect our kids.”
Craddock is one of those who believes concrete measures must be taken to prevent further deaths.
Proposals in individual states to ban tackle football for younger children during a critical period in their brain development have received little support. At the same time, youth participation in tackle football has increased has been declining for yearsand there are increasing efforts to get young boys excited about flag football.
In 2023, three young soccer players died from head injuries and 10 players died from other causes, such as heat stroke, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Robert Cantu, medical director of the organization, which has tracked soccer-related deaths for more than 40 years, calls that a “typical” year.
“So I wouldn’t be too worried about two deaths in a week,” he said. “But I would be very worried if we had two deaths a week for four or five weeks in a row. Because we’ve never had that before.”
Cantu also subscribes to another philosophy: “No blow to the head is good,” he says.
In the past, Cantu has advised that children under the age of 14 should not be allowed to tackle or head the ball in soccer or use full-body checking in hockey.
In football practice, most helmet-to-helmet contact can be eliminated by using non-collision techniques, such as tackling dummies, said Cantu, who is also co-founder of the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation, which supports patients and families struggling with brain trauma symptoms. He recommends that kids play flag football until they reach high school.
Flag football is already wildly popular among girls and has been approved as an Olympic sport for men and women at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. About 500,000 girls ages 6 to 17 played flag football in 2023, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Whether that popularity will extend to boys remains to be seen. The Concussion Legacy Foundation has a “Flag Football under 14” initiative and has compiled a list of NFL Hall of Famers who waited until high school to play tackle football, including Tom Brady, Jerry Rice, Jim Brown and Walter Payton.
“I think 12 is a good time to start the conversation,” said Dr. Chris Nowinski, the foundation’s CEO and a former WWE wrestler who retired after a concussion. “But any minimum age that takes into account the health of children’s brains would be welcome.”
Nowinski said even the NFL has limited full-contact practices during the regular season and recently changed kickoff rules to prevent concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathya degenerative brain disease that medical studies have linked to head injuries in NFL players.
“Yet American football in high school and middle school has not brought about any change,” he said.
Efforts to ban tackling in youth football have been met with fierce resistance. A New York lawmaker fought unsuccessfully for 10 years to enact such a rule. In January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he do not sign a similar law if it reached his desk.
There has been some progress, however. For example, all 50 states have some form of sports-related concussion laws, which typically require athletes to leave a game or practice if a concussion is suspected and get clearance from a medical professional before they can return.
An increase in reported concussions from 2005-06 through 2017-18 was likely due to that extra education and awareness, said Christy Collins, president of the Indianapolis-based Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention. The center uses a sample of high schools across the country to calculate injury rates associated with football practices and games combined.
“Athletes (and their parents) may have been more likely to recognize the symptoms of a concussion and report these symptoms to medical professionals,” Collins said.
Loren Montgomery, who has won nine Oklahoma state championships in 14 seasons as head coach at Bixby High School, believes football is “safer than ever.” He cites efforts to minimize the risk of injury, such as penalizing helmet-to-helmet contact and certain types of blocks, along with technology, including cognitive testing to assess concussions and protective soft helmet covers known as Guardian caps.
“Of course there is inherent risk in all contact sports, but the values of teamwork, hard work and overcoming adversity far outweigh the risk involved,” Montgomery said. He let his son play football starting in the fourth grade, “and I believe it has made him a more well-rounded young man.”
Guardian caps are used from the NFL all the way down to youth level. A Guardian Sports cap sells for $75 on Amazon. However, the caps only have a limited warranty of six months from the date of purchase, meaning they can be expensive for a school district to replace every football season.
Guardian Sports also warns on its website that no helmet, helmet pad or training device will prevent or eliminate the risk of concussions or other serious head injuries during sports.
However, Craddock has promised to investigate the use of the caps at Madison Middle School in Cohen’s memory.
On Wednesday, days before his son was to be buried, Craddock found the strength to talk to Cohen’s teammates.
“I told them this was a bad accident, that they had to move on,” he said. “I didn’t want them to have the weight of my son on their shoulders. But I wanted them to play for him. I wanted them to play ‘Cohen strong.'”
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Riddle reported from Montgomery, Alabama.