The Foothills Eagles are using tackling to tackle safety in sport.
With the goal of curbing the number of concussions and head injuries, Foothills coaches are now armed with the tools to teach tackling techniques which put a premium on not using your head as the major point of contact as part of Football Canada’s Safe Contact program.
“Eventually this will be the only system that is taught. It’s going to be a change, it’s a lot more technical, but we’re in full support of it,” said Eagles president Cam Burbank. “At the end of the day we want to make sure kids play and have fun.
“Concussions are a reality regardless of what sport you play and we want to make sure people are aware we’re not ignoring the safety, that we take that seriously.”
As described by Football Canada, Safe Contact teaches safe tackling and blocking techniques with an emphasis on contact with the chest and front shoulder and not the head.
“It eliminates the head from the tackling, it’s very similar to rugby,” Burbank said. “We are going to great lengths to make sure safety is the number one priority.
“All coaches in order to get evaluated and move through the system in terms of technical competency as a coach, you have to be teaching this new tackling technique.”
Football Canada made it mandatory for all coaches falling under its government body to be Safe Contact trained in March of 2015. The ruling gave all head and at least half of a team’s assistant and position coaches one year to complete the training as well as the e-learning module Making Head Way in Football. The remaining coaches were given a final deadline of March 2017.
Any new coach has one calendar year to complete Safe Contact training. Over 5,000 coaches across the country are trained under the program, including 687 in Alberta.
Burbank said approximately 90 per cent of Eagles coaches have gone through the training.
Old habits die hard and the progress will not be overnight, Burbank said.
Though the new program should be easier to adopt for newcomers to the sport in the Atom division, it will likely be a gradual process.
“In Atom, they’re only learning this technique. They don’t know anything else,” he said. “I think it will be probably a decade before it filters out and gets into the university level.
“It will take a matter of time to be accepted as mainstream, but I have no doubt in the next few years it’s going to really change how the game of football is played.”
Part of the training reinforces the return-to-play protocol for concussions.
Coaches are taught to recognize the signs of concussions. Additionally, in the Calgary Bantam Football Association there is mandatory concussion testing and teams and players have access to an outside party as a means to assess proper management and protocol.
The Eagles will get their first chance to show off their technique in two age divisions for the opening weekend of regular season play. The Peewees kick things off on Aug. 25 at 8 p.m. versus the Cowboys-Grey. Foothills’ Bantams open the campaign on Aug. 27 at 1 p.m. against the Calgary Bulldogs. All the games at are at Shouldice Park in NW Calgary.
