High 5 Sports - Prep sports coverage from FOX 5 Atlanta - Contact rules changed in youth football league

Seventy percent of football players in this country are children 15 or younger. There's growing concern that the young players may be vulnerable to head injuries, like concussions. It's why the nation's largest youth football league - Pop Warner - is changing the practice rules, and other leagues are following suit.

They're not changing the game, they're changing the way they practice. If you look at high school and college football, most of the bigger hits, and the concussions, occur during the games. But new research shows youth players get hurt more often in practice.

For the Sandy Springs Saints, it's the second day of practice in pads. The fifth-graders are practicing a little differently.
    
"Where it used to be that you teach the kids to hit with their facemask, right in the chest. Now we teach them to go to the side with it, keep your head completely away from the play," said head coach Jeff Warshaw.

Warshaw is drilling his players to play tough, but safe. His players belong to the North Metro Football League, where the coaches are following new rules set out by the Pop Warner league.
   
To reduce helmet-to-helmet hits, coaches are being told to limit high-contact drills to 1/3rd of practice time, no more than 40 minutes a day, or 2 hours a week, and ban full speed, head-on tackling or blocking drills from more than three yards apart.

Warshaw says they still tackle,  just not head on, and from far apart. He's glad to more focus on protecting kids from head trauma,

"We didn't even think about it 20 years ago. It was, you should be hitting as hard as you can and if you're hurt, get back in there, get a glass of water and get back in," said Warshaw.

Mark Houghton's son suffered a concussion just last year.

"The doctor asked him later if he had a headache and he said ‘Not really, but my head hurts a little.' Once he said that, the doctor said that's a concussion, no football for a week," said Houghton.

So how hard are kids getting hit? Researchers at Virginia Tech and Wake Forest wanted to find out. They placed impact sensors inside the helmets of a handful of 7 and 8-year-old players. Most of the hits they took were not strong enough to cause brain damage. But about 5 percent were as powerful as the hits players take in college ball and the pros. All of the really bad hits happened in practice, not games.