By Dr. Richard P. Borkowski

Richard P. Borkowski, EdD, CMAA, is a sport safety consultant based in Narberth, Pa. The former Director of Physical Education and Athletics at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pa., his most recent book is titled Coaching for Safety, A Risk Management Handbook for High School Coaches, and is published by ESD112. He can be reached at: drbork@comcast.net.

If you're interested in being a knowledgeable athletic director, you've surely taken a course at some point on risk management. It's a hugely critical topic for athletic administrators to understand.

But textbook learning and reality sometimes don't converge. Looking back, I realize there was a lot I didn't learn in "Sport Safety 101" that can help prevent a lawsuit from dropping on one's desk. Here is a compilation of those items:

You will get sued. We live in a litigious society, and most athletic directors will be handed a lawsuit sometime over their careers. Today, it is just too easy, and often without financial cost, to sue someone else.

A cultural norm has also arisen that if we are injured, we look to place blame on someone other than ourselves. If our child is injured, we look even harder.

For example, a western Pennsylvania family sued their local community because a soccer goal post fell on their eight-year old son. The boy had wandered away from his parents, trespassed, and with two friends tried to lift a section of the goal post, which had been disassembled for the winter. The two friends let go of the section and the boy broke his wrist. The case went to court, and the community won. The moral of the story: Parents will sue even when they clearly do not have a case.

Understanding that you will always be close to the center of the "Injury Industry" is the starting point of lowering the chance of injuries and lawsuits. You need to be prepared to justify your actions in every injury, in all situations.

There is no bullet-proof vest. A respected professor once wrote in a national journal that a coach did not offer proper supervision if he or she did not see and hear everything happening on the field. This professor had the best intentions and wanted to reinforce the need for supervision. But plaintiffs' lawyers now routinely use this sentence against coaches who didn't see or hear everything.

In reality, the professor's statement is simply an impossible standard of supervision to uphold. So what do we do? We need to communicate that freedom from harm is a myth. We need to tell parents that we cannot guarantee athletes will not get hurt and we cannot eliminate all risks from a sports program.

We can also put strategies in place to reduce risk and continually educate our coaches on their role. This means they need to ...

Understand duties of care. From the standpoint of safety, the required duties generally fall into seven categories:

• The duty to properly condition athletes for the activity.
• The duty to properly instruct athletes in the skills necessary to play the game.
• The duty to provide proper equipment, especially protective equipment.
• The duty to offer appropriate playing sites that are free from hazards.
• The duty to warn and inform athletes about the injury potential of the sport.
• The duty to offer appropriate supervision.
• The duty to have and implement a post-injury emergency program.

The best way to make sure all of these duties are followed is through use of the old-fashioned checklist. We can't remember everything all the time. But if every coach has a safety checklist specific to their sport and their school that is reviewed periodically, they are less apt to forget safety.

Of all the duties, the one that coaches get called on the most is the duty to offer appropriate supervision. Often, it is not because of a lack of knowledge about how to supervise, but rather what I call the "sloth syndrome." The coach knows the correct way to oversee the practice, but he or she doesn't do it. The coach cuts corners, is not diligent, or just figures, "Aw, it'll be okay."

Say no. Coaches want athletes to improve. They want them to succeed. They have trouble saying "no" to an unsafe situation if the consequence is taking away an athlete's chance to get better.

When the girls' lacrosse team can't get into the gym on a rainy day, they practice in the lobby watching the track team run in the hallways. When the field is wet, the soccer team works out on the tennis courts trying to avoid the net posts. These are situations when athletic administrators need to step in and say, "no, it's not okay."

In addition, coaches can sometimes be too accepting of unreasonable conditions in order to be a team player. The principal says this is the field you have to practice on--why cause conflict by telling him or her you can't safely play there? But being a team player works both ways. Your school and administration owes you and your players the appropriate tools to run a safe program.

Be skeptical. To get an edge, coaches often need to be on the cutting edge. They are eager to try out any new drill or piece of equipment. But those new ideas should be critiqued for safety first.

One item I'll always remember is "softball on a string" for batting practice. This device expected someone to swing a rope with a ball on the end of it while a batter took cuts at the ball. Unfortunately batters do not always hit the ball perfectly, and too often the holder was injured by the ball, bat, or string.

Don't let your coaches be the first on the block to buy a new item. Tell them to wait until it is a proven tool.

Keep learning. The worst thing we can do is not continue to learn. Recommendations change and everyone should strive to keep current about risk management techniques. We need to know about everything from heat exhaustion and inclement weather issues to concussions and communicable diseases.

Risk management is not a topic only for preseason meetings or special presentations following a lawsuit at a neighboring school. It's a daily task. We need to remember that what we learned in Sport Safety 101 was just the starting point.