One Year Ago… The Damar Effect

It’s been one year since America watched as Damar Hamlin suffered a sudden cardiac arrest as a result of commotio cordis on Monday Night Football. Commotio cordis is quite rare, but sudden cardiac arrest is not. But SCA has never received the amount of attention before January 2, 2023 as it has since that time. As Matthew Mangine Jr’s father has said, their organization and other organizations like them would not have been able to garner the amount of attention. But the whole cause and so many things surrounding Sports Safety became a hot topic in 2023. The question for 2024 is where do we go from here? We’ve identified a major problem, but in 2024 we must attack the problem.

On my drive home for Christmas this year, I listened to “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference.” This was definitely not what I was expecting it to be, but a very good book to listen to while I drove for ~10 hours. As I listened to the book, I wondered what the Tipping Point would be in youth sports and were we witnessing it happening right now? Ironically enough, I think we are seeing it and it’s not because of youth sports at all! One of the concepts in the book is the “actions of few” who make a difference. Athletic Trainers have called for improvements in sports safety for a long time and have often fallen on deaf ears. ATs have saved lives for a long time, but none have been as influential as the sports medicine staffs from the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals as they saved Damar Hamlin’s life on the field that night. Or what about the actions of Rachel Leahy who was instrumental in saving the life of an Army hockey player and was featured on ESPN last winter? These “actions of a few” have made a lot more people aware of the needs for sports safety. It’s unfortunate that it took an event on national television to wake a lot of people up, but the “action of the few” concept is fully in play and now it’s time that we capitalize on it.

The Matthew Mangine Jr “One Shot” Foundation definitely did that in 2023, as they announced a few days ago that they had trained 10,000 people in hands-only CPR in 2023! That is an amazing feat! And I look forward to so much more of this type of training, from them and from other groups, in 2024. It’s time that we have an epidemic of sports safety. And it’s started… in 2024 we must push to make it even better! Through the work of organizations like the Matthew Mangine Jr “One Shot” Foundation, the Zach Martin Memorial Foundation, and the Jordan McNair Foundation, the work of #SaferSidelines by Stephanie Kuzydym, and the everyday work of athletic trainers with their feet on the ground—We will improve sports safety for more kids!