A players thoughts on why to wear a mouth guard.

Young lacrosse players do not really understand why the refs and coaches are always on them about their mouth guards. Yes teeth are important but really concussions are the important issue. I misplaced a great picture I saw a day or so ago showing a play that was more chewing on his mouth guard -- it was clearly in his mouth but not between his teeth.

Read what this player has to say: http://indiana.laxallstars.com/?p=4324&preview=true

His text:

If You Don’t Mind, I Will Begin at the Beginning

Trefzger | October 30, 2011 | 0 Comments

Well I saw this whole blog thing take off last year and thought to myself, hey this looks like fun might as well give it a try. I’ll spare you all the long introduction since hopefully you’ve all read my masterpiece of a Meet the Hoosiers article, but to make a small reintroduction or for those who missed out, I’m Josh, I’m a senior, and I am from the paradise that is Los Angeles Ca.

This beautiful piece of scenery is a mere 15 minutes away from my humble abode. I know you’re jealous.

Now that the pleasantries have been exchanged, I’m going to get a little bit serious for the rest of this post. This Fall Ball has been frustrating for me personally to say the least. But I learned a great lesson and I hope to pass it on to the rest you laxers out there. I know Tref touched on the subject of concussions last year, and now I’m going to add to that with my very own first concussion experience.

Before I came out to IU, I coached a couple different programs and always harped on my players to strap up their helmets and wear mouth guards. What I think a lot of young players don’t know is what a mouth guard actually does. Yes it protects your beautiful pearly whites that Mom and Dad spent a fortune on, but it also helps to prevent concussions. I’m no doctor, but the way it’s always been explained to me is that basically if you’re hit hard, the movement of your jaw has something to do with the cause of a concussion. Thus, when wearing a mouth guard, the jaw can’t move and a concussion can be avoided or less damaging.

Anyway, a few weeks back we were going through our regular routine at practice and I had my helmet strapped since were doing contact drills, but I wasn’t wearing my mouth guard. Its fall ball right?? What could possible happen??? Well my man (Tref) got the ball and I ran out to play some wicked D on him. He winds up to shoot. Now those of you don’t know, Tref has a wicked shot, so I turned my body to get out the way since I really didn’t feel like getting pegged. Well the next thing you know, I have this loud ringing in my ear and I felt like I was on a boat. I’m pretty sure you all can put 2 and 2 together on what happened. Needless to say, I spent the rest of fall ball watching from the sidelines.

You can see the ball mark; I don’t know how Peter Moore and Chucky Aikens do it on a daily basis.

Moral of the story, strap up at all times and wear a mouth guard. Would it have saved me from the concussion?? Who knows, but it definitely would not have hurt to have it in. For those of you still doing Fall Ball enjoy and have fun. Can’t wait to bring back the Cali Swagger to Btown. Here’s my Sunday banger for you all to enjoy.