All-Star Starting A Discussion: The Safety Of Spring Floor Vs... Well.. Anything Else

[laughAlittle]

Not necessarily. The only way to eliminate all risk is to not allow anything. I think most of us are trying to figure out what an acceptable level of risk is and how to take measures that allow more skills/fun/height/wow without exceeding the acceptable level of risk.

Wearing full football gear and performing on 10 feet of pillows would probably put us at an extremely low level of risk, but few of us would want to watch or participate in those routines.

In your opinion, what skills, fun or wow factors should be allowed, without exceeding an acceptable level of risk?

 

[Deleted member 15]

In your opinion, what skills, fun or wow factors should be allowed, without exceeding an acceptable level of risk?

I don't think we should allow much more right now. Our industry has a lot of _______ people coaching that put athletes at risk. Until we figure out how to control that we need to keep the current limits. (I couldn't figure out what to put in the blank but stupid and irresponsible were the first words to come to mind).

If we had more responsible coaches I'd be all for adding flipping tosses, double backs, and allowing higher release moves. I wouldn't be opposed to double back tosses in L6 either.

 

[BlueCat]

In theory, there ought to be two steps to the process.

1. Determine what is an acceptable level of risk for a skill/activity. (1 "catastrophic" injury for every billion attempts? 100 million attempts?)

2. Approximate what the approximate injury rate for each skill for each set of athletes in each setting. (Basket toss backs on concrete involve serious injury 1 in every 100,000 attempts?)

Then you simply eliminate every skill that doesn't meet the standard.

The problem is that BOTH of those are incredibly difficult to do in the best of scenarios. The best we can do is simply approximate/predict these based on experience.

 

[Deleted member 15]

In your opinion, what skills, fun or wow factors should be allowed, without exceeding an acceptable level of risk?

I think there are a lot of individuals that can very safely do more than currently allowed, but don't think there are many teams that can so I don't think the industry should allow much more. If you watch an entire division from the event of your choice you'll see several things that the coaches simply should not have allowed because they didn't have a chance.

I wish there was a coaches deduction on the score sheet because some things are the coaches fault, not the athletes, and should be attributed to the correct person. I saw one routine last year that caused me to ask the event director if I could ban the team from performing day 2. It was a train wreck with multiple blatantly illegal things.

 

[King]

Hrmmmm... A coaches deduction. I kinda like that idea.

 

[Deleted member 15]

Hrmmmm... A coaches deduction. I kinda like that idea.

I'm surprised you haven't heard me say that before.

 

[cupieqt]

I'm surprised you haven't heard me say that before.

I haven't and I liked it too... but I'd hate it if I got one. I already beat myself up if we get a legality. Basically that is the coaches deduction.

 

[newcheerdad]

Determine what is an acceptable level of risk for a skill/activity. (1 "catastrophic" injury for every billion attempts? 100 million attempts?)

Exactly. If the question is one of "risk tolerance", the first thing you need to do is define what's an acceptable level of risk. That can vary widely depending on who you talk to, as some folks are far more risk-averse than others.

 

[Deleted member 15]

I haven't and I liked it too... but I'd hate it if I got one. I already beat myself up if we get a legality. Basically that is the coaches deduction.

That was specifically meant for King. We chat fairly often so I'm surprised he hasn't heard me say that. I'm not sure I've ever typed it.

 

[King]

If a team were to compete a section / skill that showed gross negligence in coaching that team would be assessed a coaches penalty which is a 10% reduction in score.

 

[BlueCat]

Exactly. If the question is one of "risk tolerance", the first thing you need to do is define what's an acceptable level of risk. That can vary widely depending on who you talk to, as some folks are far more risk-averse than others.

True. It is also an issue that generally, people are very poor at evaluating relative risk. Things that sound particularly "scary" (for lack of a better word) typically get over-reacted to than would be justified from a statistical point of view. (Shark attacks, ebola virus, airplane crashes, getting kidnapped by strangers, hidden razor blades in halloween candy, etc.) Meanwhile, things that seem common, but are often much more likely to cause serious harm, are often under-reacted to. (drowning in backyard pools, texting while driving, cycling without helmet, etc.)

The "trick" is to try to estimate a more accurate way to evaluate the relative danger of each skill and each situation. You also have to keep the overall rules simple enough that they are understandable to the typical coach/parent/athlete. Combining those two is a task that is much more difficult than you would think.

 

[munchkinmom]

A set of allowed skills by performance surface could go a long way. From there you could convince competition producers to make coaches sign an affidavit that their teams do not practice/perform skills on inappropriate surfaces. This could eventually be taken to the point of suspending teams from competitions for violations. Some rec/school coaches live for participating in the competitions produced by the same companies that do all-star, often competing in the same competitions and the thought of not being allowed into those competitions may be enough to keep them from teaching pee-wee rec teams how to do basket tosses on grass.

 

[chyeeaaa69]

throughout the last page of this thread, all I thought was "we don't want to encourage the girls to perform such hard skills, Burt. Surely you should know that" from Stick It...
anyways, I had always wondered before this thread how safe a spring floor is to actually be landing on, and what went into figuring that out, and I kinda learned, so that was useful. now to my experience with hard floor. I'd say hard floor causes a lot more injuries, if even minimal. I did the splits this weekend on concrete?... @acx.cheer ...(a very thin carpet above it) and still have a headache because I smacked my face off of it.. I don't think if I did that on spring floor I'd still have a headache (actually.. I've done it before, and never really experienced much pain). just sliding into the splits (don't ask how that involves my head hitting the ground..) caused me a lot of pain hitting hard floor, so a stunting or tumbling fall should be a lot worse.

 

[King]

throughout the last page of this thread, all I thought was "we don't want to encourage the girls to perform such hard skills, Burt. Surely you should know that" from Stick It...
anyways, I had always wondered before this thread how safe a spring floor is to actually be landing on, and what went into figuring that out, and I kinda learned, so that was useful. now to my experience with hard floor. I'd say hard floor causes a lot more injuries, if even minimal. I did the splits this weekend on concrete?... @acx.cheer ...(a very thin carpet above it) and still have a headache because I smacked my face off of it.. I don't think if I did that on spring floor I'd still have a headache (actually.. I've done it before, and never really experienced much pain). just sliding into the splits (don't ask how that involves my head hitting the ground..) caused me a lot of pain hitting hard floor, so a stunting or tumbling fall should be a lot worse.

For fun, why not create a list of limits per surface?

Why not limit to level 3 on hard floor? And level 2 on concrete? To keep it simple?

 

[King]

Thinking about this a bit more:

Limit Level 2 on any surface that is NOT hard floor or spring floor. At games you would be able to do halfs and extensions. Straight cradles. Handsprings. Only extended pyramids while connected. Only straight cradles. When it comes to cheering on your team, that is all that really matters anyway.