“We’re just trying to be as proactive as possible to protect our student athletes,” Bob Bone, the athletic director at Clayton High School, said.

Over the last few years, Clayton High School has offered students the option to participate in the imPACT testing program, which helps in the process of diagnosing concussions in student athletes. The program works by taking a baseline test of each student athlete. If the athlete suffers a head injury, the test is taken a second time and the results of either test are compared.

Although the state does not require any kind of testing for concussions, Bone believes that proactivity is very important regarding the safety of student athletes.

“Obviously there has been so much press over the last several years about head injuries and things going on. I think it probably started at the NFL level and then the college level and I think the education is so much greater now of what actually happens when you have an impact like that… we felt that we needed to be as proactive as possible to protect our student athletes” said Bob Bone.  

The School District of Clayton spends $1,200 each year, providing each student athlete with the ability to take the imPACT test.  

Dr. Steven Rothman is the former Director of Pediatric Neurology at Children’s Hospital and a Clayton resident. In December of 2015, Rothman wrote an article which was published in the New York Times, titled ‘Parents, Stop Obsessing Over Concussions’.  

In the article, Rothman criticized the overemphasis by many medical professionals and parents regarding concussions and other head trauma. As a pediatric neurologist, Rothman has witnessed a great deal of head trauma in minors.

“I would be most worried about football, hockey, and wrestling, although there is not much evidence that students who play those sports and just do them in high school are at risk for long term neurological problems” says Rothman about the danger regarding certain sports.  Although Rothman believes certain sports may lead way for higher head trauma risk, he does not believe there to be any way to test for concussions.  

“I have taken care of kids who have had impact testing and believe there may be some logic in getting a baseline as you describe. However, I have not found the test to be that helpful. The big problem for some of the athletes I have seen is that they continue to have problems for weeks after some type of head injury with a normal or unchanged impact test … you might have an important head injury and still have a normal impact test result. There is no proof that return to baseline impact score means that your brain has totally recovered,” said Dr. Rothman.  

The School District of Clayton believes that the imPACT test can still help, “To be as proactive as possible to protect student athletes” as Bone said.