Athletic staff report early-season spike in injuries, credit practice changes with decline

The Regional School District 13 board on July 8 heard a detailed athletic report explaining a rise in injuries early in the 2025–26 season and steps taken to reduce risk.

Todd, the district athletics lead, and Ethan Bancowski, the district's full-time athletic trainer, said the surveillance system recorded about 60 reportable injuries for the year. "In the fall, we did have 10 concussions. And then the annual, we had 11," Todd said, adding that approximately 70% of concussions occurred during games rather than practices. The presenters defined a reportable injury as one that kept an athlete out roughly four days or required additional intervention.

Officials told the board an unusually high cluster of injuries — 27 in roughly a month early in the fall season — triggered immediate action. "About a month in, Ethan came through, and we noticed a very large number of injuries, 27," Todd said. He and the athletic trainer then met individually with coaches, adjusted practice plans (cutting conditioning, limiting contact minutes and modifying warm-ups), and increased communication between coaches and the training staff. "We only had 15 injuries after that point in time," Todd said, citing the decline as evidence the changes were effective.

Board members pressed for more detail on methodology and longitudinal context. Several asked how many unique athletes were injured versus repeat visits and how hours of exposure (practice vs. game time) affected rates. Todd said the district has two full years of consistent athletic-trainer surveillance data and is working to compile multi-year aggregates and sport-by-sport breakdowns to enable better comparisons.

Privacy protections and small-sample reporting were discussed. Because the district is small, staff used an aggregated disclosure convention (reporting "fewer than 3" for some small counts) to avoid identifying individual students while still sharing trends. Board members requested that staff produce sport-level participation numbers and unique-athlete counts to calculate injury rates per athlete and provide better context for the raw counts.

The presentation also covered programmatic responses: limiting summer conditioning windows (the district limited summer supervised practice to a shorter window this year), requiring a mandatory week off between summer practice and season start, reducing conditioning frequency when injury signals appeared, and improving parent communications for multi-sport athletes. The athletic staff said they will continue season-by-season monitoring and aim to build a longer trend line to better evaluate which changes produce durable safety benefits.

The board did not take formal action on the athletic recommendations at the July 8 meeting; members asked staff to return with disaggregated and multi-year data so the board can consider policy changes if warranted.