Pleasure to introduce my partner, Dr. Joel Boyd. Dr. Boyd's an associate professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Minnesota. He works at Tree Orthopedic Center. He's been a hockey doc for a really long time, has taken care of USA Hockey, has taken care of the Minnesota Moose prior to the Minnesota Wild coming on board, and has been the team physician for the Minnesota Wild for their entire existence. He was a team physician for the Olympic team when they went to Nagano, an expert in knee ligament surgery and knee surgery, and actually a really important mentor of mine as I've kind of learned the ropes of being a team physician. We also have the great pleasure of bringing two of his kids on board for this session. Both of them are former hockey players and both work in the hockey business. His daughter, Kendall Boyd Tyson, is the senior vice president of finance and business intelligence for the Seattle Kraken. She has a degree from Emory University and got her MBA at Yale. And his son, Kyle, who also works for the Kraken as the director of fan development, got his degree from Dartmouth. And again, both former players. So this is going to be a really exciting session. So, Joel, why don't you come on up? All right, well, thanks. Thank you, Brad, for that nice introduction. And you're right, it's always fun to present, especially on this topic. It's something that I've kind of just happened to come along with me as I had my journey through hockey, you know, starting way back when and, you know, as it continues. But this is one of those areas that I've had a fun time researching and bringing to light. Also, obviously, it's always great to be able to stand and boast and have the opportunity to present something or anything with your children. So I'm looking forward to this as much as you guys. No disclosures. For the most part, I mean, I'm gonna run through a number of slides. Usually this talk, I've given it a number of times and it, this first part of it, and it's about the history of African North Americans in hockey. But I actually did a JB Jess article in September 28th of 2020, it was published. So it's certainly in its longer form. If you want to look that up and have it as a reference, you can have it. So if it looks like I'm running through some slides, you'll also have this slide deck, but also you can make that reference as well. So let's start with, you know, where was hockey invented? It's now pretty much everybody's in agreement that that hockey was invented in Nova Scotia in Canada. And essentially, there's a lot of other things going on just prior to this. Actually, the United States was going through its transformation in 1776 and trying to become its own own country and break away from England. We had a lot of English people who were in the U.S. at the time. They served in different roles, but in particular, at King's College, which was in New York City, and at King's College, they were professors and the like, but didn't necessarily agree with the whole independence thing. So a number of them actually migrated to Nova Scotia. At the time, they also had slaves that went with them, and when they moved to Nova Scotia, they gave their slaves their freedom, but they started a new King's College in Nova Scotia, which still exists. At that school, this is where hockey was discovered. So you had different professors, Irish, English, and at first they introduced this thing called field hurley, which the students would play. The term hurley on ice was coined by Thomas Chandler Halliburton in 1800, and the sport gained popularity in Nova Scotia in the 1800s. This is just a quick summary of kind of like what happened next. So hockey gradually became known as ice hockey. 1860, you see wooden pucks, they developed spring skates to use in the winter. The military really picked it up and played in the late 1800s. Then ice hockey was introduced to Montreal by George Creighton, and then ice hockey arrives in Ottawa. Ice hockey was played in Toronto for the first time in 87, and hockey nets started to be used, and finally we get to 1900 where we had covered hockey rinks. You know, the history of hockey can't be complete without talking about the Native Indians who were in the area at the time. The Mi'kmaq tribe, they essentially were known for carving hockey sticks. So these were the first known hockey sticks that were available, and that was a really important part of ice hockey. So the minorities that had moved to Nova Scotia at the time, essentially there were more or less three or four significant migrations into that area. It actually started even well before this in that slave ships that went up the coast of the U.S., the last stop was Boston, and then after that they sailed into Canada and all the way to Halifax, and anyone who was left on the boat at that point had to get off. So basically any slaves that weren't sold had to get off the ship in Halifax. So you had this small group of, again, sort of North American minorities who then started to form small towns. As I mentioned, the War of 1776, you had another immigration of minorities into Canada. Then there's the War of 1812 where we were fighting Canada, and you had another immigration of minorities into Canada who actually fought for Canada. But these small towns had names like, for example, this is just one, Africville, it was outskirts of Halifax, you know, churches, towns. The church was sort of the main focal point of most of these towns, and to keep the men engaged they would try to do things, like in the summer they would have baseball leagues in the summer, and in the winter they played hockey. In 1895 the hockey leagues began to grow, so you can see a list of towns here that were involved. So they developed hockey programs and these, they all flourished and they would play each other. In the meantime, as hockey was migrating, as we talked about before, down towards Toronto, Lord Stanley, he made the sport of hockey much more of an elitist sport and gave it royal acceptance. The first cup was awarded in 1893. Black leagues were not allowed to compete for the Cup. They lacked the resources to maintain independent leagues and therefore made hockey much more selective. The first in black hockey, though, teams played in 1895 in Halifax. They had a championship in 1900. They were the first to allow goaltenders to go down to block pucks. Also, the churches, because they wanted to identify themselves when they played against each other, they would wear colorful sweaters, and that's where the term sweater came from for hockey jerseys, is that they would put on these colorful sweaters to identify themselves with each of the towns. This is just a photo of some of their better teams, the Eurekas and the Seasides. I mean, these were all reported, lots of news stories. The papers at the time would write about the escapades of these hockey tournaments and their hockey championships. 1917 was an important date, and at the time, there were military ships out in the waters just off of Halifax, and the reason why it was important was because there was a massive accident that happened, and this is how it changes the course of people's lives. This massive accident was these two ships collided and created an explosion that was essentially the biggest explosion prior to the atomic bomb. It flattened, literally flattened, the whole town of Halifax. I mean, just demolished it. Halifax kind of sat up on a hill, and then Africville sat just below it, and then the Mi'kmaq tribe was sort of at sea level. The tidal wave took out the Mi'kmaq tribe. The explosion itself took out all of Halifax, so really the only thing that was left was Africville, but when they rebuilt Halifax, places like Africville became undesirable, and this is where they started to put all the things they didn't want in Halifax, so they put the waste dump there, they put the infectious disease hospital there, you know, railroad tracks, and so these residents, you know, were taxed but received no benefits, and it kind of became an open pit dump. An open pit dump was placed there, and it was declared a slum in the 60s. So the opportunity in the decline of black hockey, you know, these teams are all established, and they were playing, but again, the towns lacked the resources and financial means to have residents play hockey, and thus it was difficult sustaining a thriving community. 1900 to 1925, the leagues, the colored hockey league of the Maritimes was a fast-paced game, colorful sweaters, and goalies were much more acrobatic. A couple of key players over the years, Herb Carnegie, he was born in 1919, played juniors and minors in Toronto, very accomplished hockey player, you know, John Bellevue, who is in the Hall of Fame, patterned his game after Herb Carnegie. They tried to get Herb to come to the NHL to play, but they wanted to send him to the minors, and he felt like he was much more accomplished than that, and so he refused to play. Let the door open to 1957, Willie O'Ree became the first NHL black hockey player. Val James was the first American-born NHL player. He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and then in 1997, the NHL developed a Hockey is for Everyone program. It was headed by Willie O'Ree as the face of that program, and basically wanted to try to bring hockey to kids here in the U.S., inner cities, to gain interest, help them become interested in the sport, and see if they could increase minority participation in the game of hockey. So where are we now? Again, I get the chance to, you know, also embarrass my kids, and you know, the fact that, yes, they've always been interested. I couldn't get any of them to become doctors, so I guess this is, I mean, this is awesome, so it's maybe even a better track, but they still are fully involved in the game, and I'm really proud of them for doing that, but I think it'd be interesting to hear their perspectives, especially, you know, from both of them. My daughter works on the corporate side of hockey, and she can tell you kind of where that side of hockey is, especially with its minority involvement, and then my son works on the players, well, not the player side as much, but sort of getting the game out in the community, director of community outreach, and trying to grow the game, especially in an area where we just started, right? I mean, the Kraken have just started about three years ago, so, you know, what it's taken and where he thinks we need to go to actually increase the number of players. We have this conversation often, so I'll let him talk about that. I don't know who's gonna go first, though. Kendall's gonna go first. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. This is definitely an exciting, you know, chance to talk a little bit about what we do every day and kind of talk a little bit about diversity and where we are today, some of the things that we're kind of working on here at the Kraken, and then kind of where I think if we're going to kind of take it one step further, where I think things are kind of headed and where we should go. So, as we think through kind of where we are today, a big piece of it, you know, being on the business side, I kind of separate things into kind of what I'll call like three buckets. There's what's happening at the league level, there's what's happening at the teams in what we call business ops, and then there's what's happening at the teams in hockey ops. And all three of those are quite distinct. I think at the league level, to start, you know, with Kim Davis's arrival, the league has made kind of insurmountable progress, I would say, in the advancement and understanding of where hockey is from a diversity standpoint, not only as it stands in the U.S., but also in North America and around the world. The measurements and metrics that they've been able to measure around diversity amongst fan affinity, hockey participation, and then obviously those who work in the sport is really the foundation and the groundwork that has to be done in order for you to know where to go. You have to know where you are right now. And so I would say if you haven't had a chance to read any of the work that's come out of the league, absolutely, you know, you should request it. It's really, one, it's really interesting. Two, I think it gives a really good perspective of the macro scale of where diversity in hockey is. Plus, I think it also kind of lends a light to kind of some of the juxtaposition between what's happening in the NHL and some of the other leagues that are predominant throughout North America. When you look at the teams, and I'll go to hockey ops first, I would say this is kind of one of the areas in which we've seen a slower pace in growth from a diversity standpoint. And when I speak about diversity, I'm really speaking of all types of diversity, gender, race, socioeconomic status, LGBTQ, etc. And so I think that has been a slower pace. And I think a the first part of it is, one, sometimes when you measure something, the result isn't as positive as you would hope. And it can kind of sometimes perhaps feel like, well, there's, you know, tons and tons of reasons as to how we got to this point, why we're at this point, and what the future is. But I think it's still extremely important to measure it. And so one of the big pieces that we've kind of enforced and really leaned into here at the Kraken is leaning in on measurement. We have to know where we are. Before we can come up with strategies or initiatives to try and fix it, we have to know where we are. And so we've also done that on the business ops side. And we're currently using a system in which we have gender metrics, and we also have race metrics that does it by level. So we say, okay, we've got all these entry-level positions. We have manager-level positions, director-level positions, and executive-level positions. And what is the kind of grade that we're getting at each of those positions based on the number of people who represent that form of diversity who fall in that category? And then what we're looking at is, okay, what we actually see, and I think this is, so far as we've talked to other teams, quite common. Entry-level positions, we're doing actually quite well. I think we get an A+. I think most teams in general get somewhere between B's and A's on the entry-level positions. And that tends to also kind of hold all the way through manager. And that makes sense. You know, entry-level people going, you know, you start off as a coordinator or a specialist, you know, you stay for two or three years and you end up as a manager. Where we start to see things shift is when you look at what's happening from a director to a VP, it makes a drastically sharp wind down. So where categories where you were getting A's, you're now getting C's. And then when you get to VPs or even execs, there's another steep drop-off. And there's two kind of main factors to that. One is, there's the denominator is just not that big. So you might have, you know, over 50 entry-level to manager positions. You can scale that and you still get a pretty solid grade. When you get to the VPs, you know, particularly at the crack of midnight, 18 VPs, right? So every time there's a one-in, one-out, that makes a drastic shift in the percentages. And so what we're doing is we're keeping an eye on that. I would say right now, we're mostly being conscious. But I think one of the pieces for us that we're trying to work through, as call it 2.0 of this, we started with tracking and measuring. Now it's a little bit of like, okay, what do you do about it? Are we going to develop a plan? And we've looked at kind of doing two things. The first one is, what we're seeing is we have a retention challenge. So we get to, we have strong diversity metrics through the manager position. And then we essentially see like a mass exodus. When we get into within that kind of director timeframe, we're seeing lots of our diversity numbers drastically decrease. Whether that's because people who represent diversity aren't getting promoted into those positions, or they're getting promoted into those positions not with the Kraken, or they're deciding to leave sports in general altogether. And so we're going to kind of come up with ways to have more heavily invest in our diverse talent in that specific category, in order to help them kind of make that jump from manager to director within our organization. But we're also open to them finding opportunities elsewhere in hockey. But how do we kind of make sure we're keeping them within the hockey family? And then we're also doing a lot of investment in professional development and mentorship. So how do we make sure that the people who are already in those director and VP positions are paired with people who are looking to make that transition? What advice can they provide? How can they help them along that journey? And then how do we bring in outside talent to kind of help that group and coach that group on making that transition as well? And I think a lot of that comes from, you know, they don't necessarily get that, we'll call it locker room or side conversations on what to do, or hey I know somebody who can help you with X, Y and Z. And so how do we, they can't get it organically, how do we kind of manufacture it for them? And so that's kind of the, those are the pieces that we're doing. I think when I think through where we go from here and what's to come, I think we have to seriously look at how are we not only investing in hockey to get people to play, which is kind of a little bit about kind of what my dad talked about and a little bit about what Kyle's going to talk about, but how do we expose hockey to more people in general so that when they come up to, you know, being in university or post-grad and they're thinking about, hey what is it that I want to do? Hey I'm really good at math and science, I think I want to go into accounting. How do they, you know, how do we make sure that they know that, hey you can be an accountant at a hockey team? Or how do we make sure that they're thinking that hockey is a place that they want to work, even if they know they want to go in sports? How do we make sure that the NHL and hockey is further towards the top of people's lists as they graduate from with their respective degrees? That's a great way to tee it up and I would just say, you know, as it relates to some of what we've already covered and what my dad mentioned and what Kendall was mentioning, you know, we are in a new market and so every new participant, every new fan, every new viewer, every new follower is incredibly valuable to our organization and so I have the pleasure of getting to introduce the game, the game that I love, that we love, so many of you are involved with to the community and many of whom are new to the to the sport, obviously, for a variety of reasons, but both at the urban, suburban, rural, throughout the Pacific Northwest, we're really excited about this opportunity to grow hockey and develop this new audience. You know, for our organization, as I was saying, you know, we are focused, as Kendall mentioned, on growing it, not just in terms of who plays, physically plays the game, obviously, we want more on ice USA hockey registered participants, and that's a number that we're actively tracking. But we'd also wanna see the growth of ball hockey, PE classes, after school programs, roller hockey, finding more ways for kids, youth, adults to play is so important. We truly know that those who physically play, get involved with the game, tend to develop a faster affinity for it and a deeper appreciation for it. As we think about our strategy, we also know that inclusivity has to be at the front and center of that. Meaning that for many in our community, and those of you who've been to Seattle know it's an incredibly diverse city and a diverse part of the world. We have to think about that old moniker, if you see it, you can be it. So as Kendall was talking about our staffing numbers, we're obviously always trying to think about who are the coaches on the ice? How do we introduce more of our staff to the community and give them opportunities to share their own backgrounds, their own hockey stories? How do we make sure our broadcast is reflective of the folks that are in the community? So thinking about female voices on our broadcast, voices of color on our TV broadcast and radio broadcast. So much of that is important as people are thinking about not only getting their children involved and their youth involved, but also seeing themselves feel a part of something. So that's another key area that we're thinking about beyond just playing, as I mentioned. We obviously think a lot about those events and activations that we're constantly putting on throughout the season. And how can we leverage those for great community moments and great community touch points, whether it's celebrating upcoming Hispanic Heritage Month and partnering with that community, thinking about other kind of key cultural moments here, Asian American focused around Lunar New Year, Black History Month, Women's History Month, et cetera. A lot of those events often connect to a specific game, but we also wanna connect out in the community. So working with a local artist, a local restaurant, a small local business and telling their story and using our channels to promote them and highlight them is another great way to bring more people into the game. Obviously, we're also able to leverage incredible stories of our youth hockey participants and their families, some of whom are playing at the rec level, six U, eight U, 10 U, and some who have dreams of one day playing a higher level hockey that's juniors and beyond. And so I think that's another opportunity that we're actively seeking and trying to ensure that we're telling those stories from a variety of backgrounds and making sure that everyone's kind of story is included or can be included in our larger Kraken story. And so we leverage a lot of our educational partners, which I know a lot of clubs are doing, whether that's working with pre-K, 12 schools, colleges, universities. We are leveraging some of our kind of free hockey events, development camp, training camp. We do a local Kraken skills showcase similar to what the league puts on, obviously, but provide a very affordable opportunity for folks to come into our arena at 10 or $15 and do general seating and just put on an incredible event where fans can see the players up close. And then we're obviously always trying to think about, how are we creating more opportunities for those next generation of fans, as Kendall was saying, to continue to stay connected to the game regardless of where their interests may take them. So are we making sure that we're highlighting our scouts, people in hockey ops, obviously trainers, medical staff, et cetera. We wanna make sure that as people are thinking about their careers and their journey, that we are with them along the way. So engaging them as they're thinking about their middle school years, high school years, college years, always putting up programming, that's inviting youth groups to come and tour our facility, putting up panels where they can hear from local professionals and meet and greets. Professional development, as Kendall was mentioning, networking opportunities are huge for young people as they think about those future careers. So those are some of the ways that we're thinking about it, again, for developing a fan base really holistically and not just necessarily focused just on ice participation. We know that every fan that buys a hat or a sweatshirt or a sweater or a specialty t-shirt is an ambassador for our organization and we want them to feel a part of our larger Kraken hockey community. So- That's great. Yes. Yep. All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you both for sharing and we'll look forward to talking soon, again, anyway. But I'm sure that everyone here appreciated hearing a little more about both sides of hockey. Thank you. Thank you very much, Joel. That was great. I mean, you should be very proud of your kids. What awesome accomplishments. We're gonna move on. Our next speaker is virtual. So I think Dr. Heather Bergeson is one of my partners, one of Joel and I's partners at the University of Minnesota Entry Orthopedic Center. She's an assistant professor in the Department of Orthopedics and she's our gopher team physician for our women's team. She has a special interest in the young athlete and strives to keep her patients active and healthy throughout their lives. So we're gonna hear from Heather about some of the role of playing multiple sports in the youth athlete. Thank you, Dr. Nelson. And thanks for inviting me to speak today. So let me share this screen. Okay, how's that look, everybody? Okay. Okay. So we're gonna talk about the importance of playing multiple sports. And by now, I think we're probably all sick of hearing about the dangers of sports specialization, but for as much as we've tried to educate our community about the risks of this, the trend is continuing. So I think it's still an important conversation to have and I'll try and share some newer data about this today. And I have no disclosures. So objectives, we'll start by briefly defining terms that are all on the same page, talk about the risks and perhaps benefits of early sports specialization and the advantages and barriers to multiple sport play. And then we'll look at some of the mental health implications of early sports specialization. And finally, we'll discuss ways that we could try to better implement multi-sport participation. So in AOSSM's consensus statement from 2016, early sports specialization is defined as year-round training, so more than eight months per year, choosing a single sport and or quitting all other sports to focus on that one sport in pre-pubital children, so under the age of 13 or so. And then Jayanthi et al clarified this further in 2015 by creating this scale that ranks the degree of specialization from low to moderate to high. And with these three questions, can you pick a main sport? Did you quit other sports to focus on a main sport? And do you train for more than eight months per year? So each positive answer is assigned a point. And if you answer yes to all three questions, then you're considered highly specialized. And this was the first study that showed that sports specialization alone, independent of age and training volume, increases overall injury and serious overuse injury in young athletes. And then this was really the landmark study that showed with Jayanthi et al again in 2015 that showed that overuse injury rates increase if children are playing more hours per week than years of age old. So if an eight-year-old is playing more than eight hours per week, there is a higher risk of injury. Now, I'm not gonna spend much time here for sake of time as we're all familiar with these risks by now. But in addition to the injuries and burnout, highly specialized athletes are spending a lot more money or maybe their parents are spending more money and they're missing out on trying other sports or time with family and friends or doing other activities. But I wanna spend a little bit more time talking about this training and balance topic. So there are several new studies about early sport specialization and that increased risk of lower extremity injuries, particularly in our female athletes, thought to be due to these training imbalances from repetition with playing the same sport. And we don't have time to go into all of these studies today but I've listed them here in case you're interested to look at them later. So the multi-sport path, what does that really mean? Sometimes we call it diversification, sometimes sport sampling or later specialization. But there are variations on how this might be defined depending on how many sports is considered multi. Is it two or three? Does it count if you're playing three sports all at the same time, which is probably when I see more overuse injuries, like maybe this young lady going from her hockey tournament already in her soccer cleats to go to the soccer tournament in her mismatched socks. As crazy as those days were, I do miss them. But the other thing is the level of commitment. So is it a rec lead that meets twice a week or is it a club that practices every day with multiple games and tournament play on weekends? But at the heart of it, it's this deliberate play versus deliberate practice concept. Kids don't get overused injuries when they're just playing in the backyard with their friends. So this group tried to define terms a little better for future studies with this conceptual model. So there's this continuum between single sport and multi-sport practice and play. So the more that you are practicing your single sport, you would be considered specialized. Whereas more play in multiple sports would be considered sports sampling and then have a higher level of competition than would be more of the diversification category. And I don't really like this term specialized sampling, but I'm not sure how to better characterize this group of just playing in a moderate level, the single sport. So the benefits of multi-sport participation really span the biopsychosocial model. It provides a broader range of learning environments and types of practices and coaching styles. So it has opportunities for real-world life experiences in addition to physical literacy and then less injuries, of course. And it supports the long-term athlete development model, building more confidence, allowing for different team roles and then this long-term athlete success, which isn't at the point. And USA Hockey follows that long-term athlete development model. So for the really young kids, it's all about just a fun, active start. And then as they get older, the focus shifts to training and then competition. So there's some organizational oversight, but unfortunately, the sports culture, as we know, is still persisting and especially within youth hockey, I would say. This is from the International Society for Sports Psychology is their position stand on the developmental model of sport participation. And it states that sport diversification does not hinder elite status. It's linked to career longevity and that deliberate play promotes intrinsic motivation. So you keep them coming back for more and preventing burnout. And then it allows for a wide range of experiences that can translate into other sports. And they say by the age of 13, it's okay to start specializing, but also play at the rec level. But 16 is when it is really developmentally appropriate to specialize. So there must be something valuable happening if early sport specialization continues to persist, right? Are there benefits to it? Well, the reality is that these athletes do get better in the short term. So then they make the better teams or the better coaches and the better competition. And then they're playing with their friends because everybody else is doing the same thing. But studies show that early sports specialization is not necessary to achieve elite status. And I wanna share five recent studies that highlight this. So this was from 2022, a systematic review looking at sports specialization and its effects on injury risk, performance benefits, career longevity in elite athletes. And they almost had 9,000 studies that they pared down. And of the eight studies that looked at injury risk, all eight showed there was an increased risk with early sports specialization. With performance benefits, seven out of nine were better if they delayed sports specialization. Two showed better, interestingly, marathon and soccer. And then career longevity, five out of nine were not associated with career longevity. However, there's studies in all of the professional sports that show that most of these athletes did play multiple sports growing up. And if they specialized early, they actually had more injuries and a less playing time. So this study was looking at NCAA D1 athletes. There are a little over 300 athletes. 95% played another sport prior to college. 45% played multiple sports up to 16. And the mean age to specialize was almost 15. And let's keep in mind that number 15 because this study was 2019. And we're gonna see some other later that has a concerning drop in that. So I lost my clicker, okay. And then this was just looking at hockey athletes at the NHL NCAA level. Mean age to specialize was 14.5. And again, early sports specialization, not necessary for athletic success. Now, this was a study from last year, 2023. And as we know, cam deformity is more common in hockey athletes. And this was looking at the moderate and highly specialized. Remember that scale of low to moderate to high. So already we're having a bit of a selection bias here, but we looked at 66 athletes, both male and female. Majority were male though. And of those 62% were in the highly specialized category. And then look at this mean age to specialize, 10.7. So the interesting thing about the study was that it was a moderately specialized group that actually had the higher odds of a cam deformity 25 times versus the highly specialized at nine. So not sure what to make of that, but it's interesting. And if we look at women, so in the professional women's ice hockey players, much more common to have sports sampling as their experience prior to playing professionally. And in 16 was the mean age to specialize. And on average, they played three and a half other sports prior to specializing. And 91% said that playing those multiple sports had a positive effect on their hockey career. Okay, so I wanna switch gears here now and focus on the mental health issues with sports specialization. So many factors complicate our children's lives now and that social media amplifies the pressure for sure. But there's this alarming trend, as we've heard about a little bit earlier today too, about this that's happening in parallel, the youth sports and social media, which is the increasing rates of anxiety and depression in our young kids. Sports are supposed to be this, they're supposed to teach resilience and buffer our kids from mental illness, but we're still seeing this concerning rise. And then you can see, between 2008 and 2020 prior to the pandemic, there was just this market increase. And then during pandemic, we saw that shoot up a little bit and then level stayed pretty high over those first three, four years. And we're just now starting to see those dive down a little bit to pre-pandemic level. So they're still high, but it's reassuring to see that dropping down. And the other silver lining is that we know that team sports participation helped reduce the concerning mental health outcomes in those kids that in particular were exposed to adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. And this study showed that there are more maladaptive psychological outcomes in those children that specialize early, including burnout and emotional and physical exhaustion. They'd start to devalue their sport and are unmotivated to play. So early sports specialization is developmentally inappropriate. And then the other thing that we have to talk about is the role of socioeconomic status. And unfortunately, youth sports is a story of the haves and have nots and continues to become even more polarized and political. And that economic divide has widened and those with lower socioeconomic status have even less access to sport now. So the mental health consequences have been profound. It's exhausting for everyone, especially our children. The good news is though is that there are some amazing organizations and smart people working on improving access for all kids to play sports and making it safer. Project Play is one of those. It's an initiative of the Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit think tank. The executive director is Tom Ferry. He's a former ESPN writer. And if you've ever read the book, he wrote Game On, the American race to make champions of our children. I think it's a great book. It's a good read. But the mission of his Project Play is to allow sports to be a playground for all, regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic status. And they have an annual state of play summit where thought leaders convened to discuss the state of youth sports. And they have this bill of rights and children modeled after the one in Norway. That's a resource to create a better cultural understanding that you should have the opportunity to develop as people through sports. When done well, sports participation is one of our best tools to instill those life lessons and promote lifelong athletic participation. So at the most recent state of play summit, they presented their new goal of 63 by 30, which is that they want 63% of kids in each state to participate in sports by the year 2030. And I have to point out that Minnesota is one of the top two states who have already achieved that goal. So go Minnesota. So how can we change youth sports culture and maximize athletic potential? Our goal really should be to keep these kids in the game for as long as we can, so they can reap all the benefits that sports has to offer. So here's what we should continue to recommend. Avoid early sports specialization. Play the sport of the season. Encourage sport sampling and diversification. Allow appropriate periods of rest so that growing bodies can recover. Kids should not play organized sports more hours per week than years of age old. And I always recommend one to two days off per week and two to three months off from a sport per year. And then we really need to understand the concept of developmental readiness, the physical and cognitive emotional development is not necessarily related to the chronological age of each child and it needs to match the demands of level of play. So that athletic development occurs over a long period of time and it's unique to each child. And then all coaches should have positive training and developmentally appropriate training. The Positive Coaching Alliance is one of those I'm sure you've heard of, it's a great example. It hosts workshops for parents, athletes, coaches, leadership to honor the game. The whole idea is we wanna keep the emotional tank of these children filled with that positive feedback and a growth mindset. And then there needs to be a top-down grassroots collective effort. So NCAA and professional sports organizations need to step up and promote solutions for a healthier long-term athlete development. A good starting point actually was when in 2019, NCAA recruitment policy changed. So you can't recruit until after sophomore year in high school, so it's a good start. And as they say, prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child. So let kids have some agency in what sport or other activity they choose to participate in. And then finally, I always say, focus on the three F's, fun, fitness, and friends. We need to unstructure play and let kids innovate and improvise on their own. Show them all that sport has to offer, but protect children from harm. And I think that's really the foundation of how we can maximize athletic potential with multi-sport participation. So that's it, thank you. Yeah, thanks Heather. Thank you. So our next speaker is Dr. Nipple Baca from Minnesota. She is a certified clinical neuropsychologist. She works with the Minnesota Vikings, also helps out with the Wild and the PWHL, and our Minnesota United. She specializes in concussion, childhood and adult disorders, including ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities. I think this is gonna be a very interesting topic. Thank you very much for coming. All right, hello. How do I move forward here? Sorry, I didn't get the tutorial. Oh, perfect, easy enough. All right, I am Lisa Nipple Baca. My disclosures are fairly minimal. I have a private practice. I work with the pro teams. I also do their ADHD evals. So in terms of objectives, my goal is to help you guys have an understanding of what attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is, what learning disabilities are, and then how those two things affect concussion and its assessment and management. So starting with ADHD, the diagnosis of ADHD is made very simplistically when you have six or more symptoms of inattention, or six or more symptoms of hyperactivity, or both. Over age 17, you only have to have five of these because we tend to outgrow some of the symptoms. But most importantly, if you read down this category, you guys are several hours into a session. You probably are wondering if you might have it. So these have to be persistent. They have to last for six months or more, and they have to affect you across environments, not just in academia. So those are the inattentive symptoms, these are the hyperactive symptoms. The inattentive symptoms are harder to see when you're looking out in front of you, so it's more of the forgetfulness, distractibility, zoning out, daydreaming, whereas hyperactivity is much more visible, the bouncing around, the fidgeting, the kicking of the leg, the moving your hands, chewing on things. And so again, we can have a hyperactive type, we can have an inattentive type, or you can have both, where you get both categories happening. In terms of the prevalence, it's high, over one in 10 kids have ADHD or have been diagnosed with ADHD. The percent of boys is markedly higher than girls, not because boys actually have higher rates, but because they get caught more frequently. Girls and women tend to have the inattentive type more often, whereas boys tend to have the combined type or the hyper type, and so we can see it. Teachers notice it earlier, they're loud, they're blurting, and so it's much more in your face. And so girls tend to get missed until the teen years or even into adulthood, so they end up going undiagnosed. In terms of race, we're getting better at catching these diagnoses in all children. Black and white children have the same, this says it's gonna turn off. Press any key to cancel. This is saying it's gonna turn off. I can keep talking regardless. But the disparity is becoming a lot better, but we still have some work to do in terms of identifying these children. So then learning disorders, very simplistically, is when a child is performing significantly below expected in an academic area than where they should be given their age and their IQ. So if a kid is a fifth grader, they have what's considered a normal level IQ, and they're struggling in reading, math, or writing, which are the three big categories, they would meet the criteria for a learning disorder. One in seven people at some point in their lives would meet the criteria for a learning disorder. This has increased substantially post-pandemic. Oh good, we're still on. Yeah, I can work with this one. So it's increased substantially post-pandemic, and unfortunately, we do see a bigger gap here with children of color and people of low socioeconomic status who were left in the dust during the pandemic. They didn't have access to teachers, services, that other kids who were more affluent had, and so there's a lot of work being done right now in the education system to bridge that gap. There is massive overlap. Kids with ADHD have a 45% likelihood of also having a learning disorder. So then switching to concussion, I won't belabor this because I think you guys have a concussion-heavy morning tomorrow, but in general, concussion rates are highly variable and hard to measure because it's not always reported. People don't always go into the hospital. It's not always diagnosed. But generally speaking, 6.8 of kids in survey research reported having some symptoms of concussion or TBI at some point in their life. 3.9% of children were actually diagnosed by a medical professional, meaning that they went in for evaluation, were diagnosed, went through the return-to-play protocol. Boys and white children are more likely to be medically diagnosed. Again, not because they're more likely to have a concussion, but because they're more likely to get medical care and to be taken seriously, which we're working on. So in terms of how ADHD and concussion overlap with each other, it's high. Number one, kids with ADHD are 142% more likely to play contact sports. They like the rough and tumble, they like the chaos. And my husband coaches hockey, he will attest to this, that he ends up with this chaos on the ice all of the time. But they tend to be drawn to these high-octane sports. And so because of that, number one, they're more likely to be exposed to concussion. But then number two, if you look at that bottom bullet point, it's intuitive that because of the lack of focus, because of the impulsiveness, the lack of awareness of their surroundings, the being so hyper-focused that you're missing details coming in, they're just more likely to sustain a concussion. The ABCD study done in 2022 found that kids with ADHD were over twice as likely to get a concussion as other athletes in contact sports who did not have ADHD. So in terms of the cognitive symptoms of concussion, hopefully we all know this, and if not, you'll learn it tomorrow, but these are just some of them. The point to show is that there's a lot of overlap with ADHD, which can make assessment and management extremely difficult to parse out what's what. So when we do assessment of concussion, depending on when these people roll into your office or whether you're seeing them on the sideline or on the bench if you're doing hockey work, we do surveys, we might do a scat, we're gonna do some interviewing to find out history, but then we use cognitive testing, which our gold standard are these computerized cognitive tests, impact being the most common. These are the areas that are measured by impact, as you probably know. So I did just change the slide, you might not be able to tell, but when we do ADHD evaluations, this is how we do it. So you can see the tests that we use to diagnose concussion are almost identical to the tests that we use to diagnose ADHD. So giving a child with ADHD a baseline test of concussion is not necessarily gonna give you the best data and information. And so it's really important to know what you're looking at when you're looking at it. So in terms of effects on assessment results, so we're talking about, let's say you're giving a kid an impact, number one, kids with dyslexia or reading disorders, they might not be able to read the instructions. And a lot of times we just leave them in the room by themselves to their own accord, to kind of go through and click through these tests to know what they're supposed to be doing. With ADHD, they might also have a hard time understanding or focusing on the instructions, or they might have a hard time staying focused for the entire 20 to 30 minutes that it takes to take the exam. They might have impulsive responding. As neuropsychologists, we have the benefit through paper pencil batteries of if somebody self-corrects, like, oh, wait, nope, I meant to say this, a lot of times we're able to give them credit for that answer. These computerized tests don't give that luxury. So a kid might answer incorrectly and then go, oh, crap, wait, no, and think they might be able to go back. In the meantime, more stimuli are popping up in front of them. And so you can see how that can have a massive effect on their final scores. Also distractibility. Don't even get me started on group baselining, especially if you think about it, one in 10 kids in that room has ADHD and essentially their results are null and void. So in terms of what you guys can do as clinicians is number one, ask. Again, if you think about those base rates, there's a one in 10 chance that the person sitting in front of you does have ADHD or a one in seven chance they have a learning disorder and they might not realize it. So just because they say they don't doesn't mean that they don't. They might not have been identified yet or they might have been compensating well enough that they were able to stay afloat. And a lot of times concussion will be the thing that does them in. They end up missing a lot of school. They're not as active and so they're not as sharp cognitively when they're in that rest period. And so all of a sudden, what they were able to sort of keep their head just above water, they end up sinking entirely. And so it shines a spotlight on what was there that might've been missed. So you might say, hey, do you have a history of ADHD learning disorder? Nope, that's not necessarily good enough. Other questions that can probe deeper would be, has your report card ever come up and said, off task, too social, can't focus. Have coaches made comments that like, hey man, come on, stay focused. Are they missing plays when they're out on the ice or delayed reaction time at puck drop? Or have they had some pullout at school? Sure, they don't have special education, but when they were in kindergarten, first grade, did they get pulled out to do any small group reading? If the answer to any of those things is yes, it should be on your radar that this could be impacting the cognitive data. If the data continuously come up bad, you gotta know when to fold them. So there comes a time in these populations where you're gonna get data all over the place. And I'm sure any of you who work in concussion have seen it where an athlete passes their exertion tests, they get discharged from OT, they're completely symptom-free, they're back to school full-time, they're ready to get back in there, and they cannot pass that stupid test. A lot of times it's because of attention issues. And what we see in these patterns is you'll get, let's say verbal memory is high one time, visual is low, they'll come back a week later, now all of a sudden visual's off the charts, but their verbal memory is down. That's not our typical concussion recovery trajectory. We don't see, oh, it gets better, and then your cognition gets worse, and then it's better and worse. It's a good indicator that there might be something else going on, in which case we abandon ship. That test at that point is a great tool to have in our toolbox, but it's no longer useful. And that's when neuropsychologists become involved if you don't already have somebody on the team, and if they haven't already been there, this is what we do, is sort out these types of cases, and we can dig deeper with the paper pencil batteries and testing to find out and get to the root of what's going on and what might have been missed. With going back to school, these kids, it's hard for any kid to be sat out and to have a concussion and to miss curriculum, especially in middle school and high school, which are very rigorous. You're missing curriculum. So for these kids with learning disorders and ADHD, they were already likely behind and struggling. Now it's getting piled on, because now they have even more work due, plus they've missed the curriculum, the exposure that they would need to actually do the work, and that can trigger these mood symptoms and irritability, hopelessness, anxiety. We also know that the best predictor of protracted recovery from concussion, these cases that last for months and months, years and years, mood disorders, are the most likely culprit for that. So you can see how this can kind of set off that process if we don't find it early enough and let it get away from us. So how we can help. Number one, for you guys being aware of how ADHD might affect these scores, knowing when you're looking at this data and not getting so hung up and married to these tests that it's like, oh, we'll just keep putting them on impact, or the cognitive screeners every two days until their scores are all normal. Also paying attention to their symptom scores. If everything else is passed, if they are passing their exertion tests and the scores they're endorsing are consistently in that cognitive domain, the fogginess, memory loss, attention problems, or at baseline too, looking at those baseline scores to see what they might have endorsed if they did have any symptoms on the day of their baseline can be really helpful to understand what's going on. Documentation for school and 504 plans are always important, but especially with this population. They're gonna need a lot more support and a lot more handholding than your neurotypical kids who do not have ADHD. And then also knowing when to refer. As sports med people, we get very good at like, oh, good, the concussion's done. There you go, rubber stamping it. It's important to kind of set them on a path of what comes next. Yes, concussion is healed, but I'd recommend you go get that attention stuff looked at because it was very clearly a player here. So referring them on to neuropsychology, psychology, a pediatrician can help triage all of this stuff, and having them go back to the school and request evaluations. And these are just some resources that I'm pretty sure you guys are gonna get handouts or have access to, but these are national organizations and agencies that you can give to people if they do have questions and they're not sure what to do about it related to ADHD and LD. And that is it. And hopefully I did less than 15 minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes. Thanks. So we're gonna, oh, there he is. We're gonna invite Dr. Mrazek back. Hopefully we can maintain our connection. He's gonna speak to us about mental health and musculoskeletal injuries. Great. Well, good to be back. I did pay my internet bill, so let's hope we have no more disruptions. So I'm just gonna pull up my slide here. Right. There we go. Okay. Well, again, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I did wanna just note one of the comments from the last session was that there was questions about a mental health screener for the young athletes. A few years ago, the IOC compiled a mental health screener for athletes, and there's now an app version of that available. And so if you wanna contact me, I'd be more than glad to follow up with that, but it's based on the IOC's findings, including the important core areas of mental health. Again, just my disclosures. Again, thanks to Dr. Naidoo and the great team that I work with in Edmonton. I think Katie Forrest and George Rumford have presented or have been, or will be presenting. So great to work with those people. So when it comes to this interesting concept of psychological readiness, we wanna start off with a discussion of what does it mean to be ready? And I think we can all think of situations where were we ready, were we not ready? If we weren't ready, what impact could that have on our behavior? And as a psychologist, we're kind of interested in how this plays out, especially in an athlete setting. It's kind of an understudied area of what psychological readiness, especially after injury. And so I'm gonna share with you some of the data that there is, but again, there's not an abundance of research or literature. And so it's an emerging area. I have one of my grad students right now looking on the psychological readiness after concussions, because with our work at the university, we sometimes have athletes that they're just not quite ready in spite of being cleared. So again, what does it mean to be ready? Thinking of situations where if you're like me, and I was with my daughters when they started to drive, the panic that I felt in the first few driving sessions, knowing that they were not quite ready, that was an interesting experience. I like that little picture of that little guy there. Was he ready to handle fire? Not sure, but it brings a smile to your face when you think of these things. But it does bring up the interesting question of what does it actually mean to be psychologically ready? And when I think of my experience and when we think of athletes, we know that especially with more significant injuries, they've gone through an extensive period of time being away from their normal activity. And so if you just think of that concept, that being away from what you normally do, what is it like when you get back into it? The school season is gonna be coming up pretty soon here. Kids have been off for the summer months. And I think most parents realize that there's that adjustment period to being back in school again. But that psychological readiness, there's components to it that are specifically germane to athletes. And I think most of us can appreciate that you can be medically cleared, you can be physically ready, and yet psychologically, where's the person at? And how ready are they? Because that has a significant impact on how they're gonna perform and so on. So some of the interesting dimensions that we have come to understand about psychological readiness are what you see on the slides here. Our definition is psychological readiness to return to sport after injury reflects an individual's mental preparedness to resume sport-specific activities. Kind of a generic definition here, but I think it's important to dive into a few of the individual components because this is what our athletes can present with. So there's the cognitive side of things. When a person is preparing to be ready, there's a few dimensions there that they're probably dealing with. One of them is confidence. And if you've had any type of significant injury, you know that your confidence to return to your pre-injury state can sometimes be shaken, especially if you've had a more significant injury. So part of what goes into a person being ready is how confident are they? Their expectations, I'm gonna talk about that in just a minute here, but your expectations about the outcome play a significant role in how ready you are. And if you've ever worked with young athletes, you know that they can be pretty nervous, especially in new situations. And if their expectation is that they're overwhelmed or that they're not sure of their abilities, that's gonna change their behavior. And so understanding that that is often a cognitive component that's going in the mind of an athlete how motivated they are. Are you ready to get back to play or do you want to get back to play? And some of our athletes at the U of A, they're in the context of post-secondary schooling, they have a lot going on and their motivation to return to play near the end of the season can be very different when it comes to recovering from an injury. Do they want to go to practice? Do they want to practice as hard? Do they want to get back to those normal activities or are they not as motivated because they want to finish their schooling? So we definitely know that the motivation of an individual athlete can play a role in their readiness. And then there's effective components. You ever been afraid that something's not gonna go well or especially the fear component of re-injury? And the more you've been injured or if you've had several injuries within a short duration of time, usually say about one month, it can certainly increase the fear about in terms of your readiness. And in my experience, I've certainly found that when athletes are dealing with that fear of what's gonna happen, it really shifts their behavior and affects their confidence. And as we'll talk about, there's usually a few areas that you really want to tap into when you notice that your athlete has a fear of returning or if they're not feeling quite ready. And then there's the third component, which is the behavioral, which is approach avoidance behaviors. And that simply means is that when it comes to getting back to practice, when it comes back to getting games, are they procrastinating? Are they pushing things off? Are they not as disciplined as they normally are? Are they approaching something that they're withdrawing quickly because they're concerned about what's gonna happen? And I appreciate the earlier conversations about neuromuscular control. That is a very big component to rehab. And that often helps with the psychological readiness of an athlete. If you have pushed yourself and undertaken various activities and tests that reinforce to you that your body is feeling good, that becomes a very, very important component of your rehab. And so I really appreciated that earlier discussion about neuromuscular training. It certainly is an important variable. Here's some of the interesting variables that are associated with psychological readiness. Age, younger athletes tend to have a higher level of psychological readiness. And I'm 56 now, and sometimes I feel I'm a little old and frail. And that does play a role in terms of your thinking about injury and the impact that an injury at my age could have as opposed to when you're earlier. The younger athletes don't seem to have as much going on in their heads about reinjury. A lot of times they haven't been injured or they have not faced a serious injury. And so when it comes to returning to normal activities, they tend to be more psychologically ready. We also see an interesting relationship between performance and psychological readiness. When players rate that they're feeling more psychologically ready, this tends to correlate, it's not a predictor, but it's a correlation with better performance. If you feel good, if you feel confidence, then you're gonna do your, you play the normal way that you play. And that really translates into better performance. And that's why I think this concept is really important for athletes. They wanna know they're ready so they can perform at the level that they have. And then understandably, players tend to have lower readiness the more they're injured. And of course, many of you have probably dealt with athletes that have dealt with some significant injuries, repeat injuries over and over. And you can see the burden that that causes when they're trying to get back to play, especially if they've had several ACL reconstructions or ACL injuries, that can be really tough. And then exploring these concepts are really important. When I first became a psychologist and I was working in schools, I remember some of my mentors talking about this concept about hoping for the best and being prepared for the worst, but it really has to do with this expectation related to what are you expecting? And the more that we have an expected outcome aligned with an actual outcome, the less stress and the more ready you tend to be. So if after a surgery, you're told that it's gonna take a month to get back to play, and three weeks, four weeks later, you're there, then we tend to see a person is much more ready as opposed to when things are delayed or when there's complications where things are not going nearly as well and so it's often a great question to ask an athlete what were their expectations and compare that to the actual outcome because I find that some of the athletes that I work with there's a lot of dissonance they're really that the part that's the part that is really affecting their readiness is am I ready to go when there's been these delays as a psychologist some of the things that we would want to deal with in terms of working with our athletes are these concepts here fear avoidance behaviors when you're afraid to do something because you're worried about reinjury it's going to change your behavior so fear can be can stop people or restrict people's activities we're certainly seeing this in concussions where people as they as they start to recover they don't feel great and then that becomes a driving force to say oh well I'm not ready to play when it's actually a fear thing I do find in individuals that are prone to or that are diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder they tend to catastrophize which means that they they think of the worst possible outcomes and that can be a real negative that negative mindset can be really problematic when you continually cast catastrophize and there's a cognitive distortion there right is if you constantly think about the worst case scenario it again there's a lot of things that happen to you or that restrict your behavior self-doubt history repeating itself and one of the interesting questions is how the injury occurred if an injury happens in a normal context to play that's one thing but if it seems to be that you there was no actual cause to it or you just tweaked your in where you had an injury that where you tweak something that seems to cause a little bit more distress in the part of the athletes so when it comes to approaches to building psychological readiness a really good year from george earlier on but the mindfulness plays a big role in just the mind and the body being ready and we know from the some of the studies that psychological factors when an athlete is stressed they are at great risk we're much higher risk to be injured and that's why their mental state before they return to play becomes really important and some of the core things you want to cover is mindfulness activities that they have somebody that they can talk to sleep hygiene because stress can affect their sleeps routines and being involved with the team now one of the things just that briefly here when we think of a person who is not at rest or who's still stressed we see a higher level of activation in the sympathetic system without going into details we know that sympathetic system is the arousal and activation system and it is very helpful to get us ready to do exertional activities but if that system is not balanced by the parasympathetic system then we tend to see that a person is is going to be much more tense much more on on edge and so on so really diving into our default mode is the sympathetic system when we're stressed or we're worried about something we tend to be much more highly activated so we have to really be intentional about activating the parasympathetic system and that's why the activities of mindfulness can be really really helpful and george went through some of those things but i do find that some athletes that are getting ready to return need uh you know a few sessions at least to really engage in that mindfulness they really are very present that we're not focusing on the external world that they're understanding thoughts that are going through their mind and we know that the research is pretty helpful when it comes to mindfulness and the impact that it has on both our cognitive and physical functioning so i believe that mindfulness can be a really really helpful part of that recovery now again i'll provide my slides here there's only a few questionnaires they tend to be pretty brief about psychological readiness but as an athlete is returning to play i do find that having them complete these questionnaires can be very helpful it flushes out some other thinking it can highlight whether it's a fear issue whether it's a confidence issue or what those things are but i think it's really important if you see an athlete struggling that you have them complete a standardized metric that gives a you and both and the athlete a sense of how they're doing so just to summarize when it comes to psychological readiness again it's a less understood or emphasized concept but it can play a big role especially recovery after significant injury athletes tend to question whether they're ready or not and that's why understanding the dissonance between their expectations and outcome become really important i guess i've showed you working with a psychologist cognitive behavior therapy to deal with the cognitive distortions or mindfulness activities can be very helpful so again if you have any questions or follow-up feel free to email me i think it was mentioned earlier or really glad to engage with with you in terms of if you have any other questions about the material presented thanks again for having me thanks marnie that was great so we're going to do something just a little bit different we've heard from a lot of clinicians and now we're going to take a few minutes to hear from some players we have two of the probably best young hockey players in both the men's and the women's game available today hopefully they're able to log on i don't know taylor brock are you there yes i'm here i'm here all right so taylor heisey is from lake city minnesota she played her high school hockey at red wing she was awarded minnesota miss hockey as the top girls player in the state in 2018 she went on to play four years at the university of minnesota she was awarded the patty kasmeier trophy for the best college player in the women's game in 2022 she was selected as the first overall pick in the pwhl draft by minnesota she helped minnesota win the walter cup championship and was awarded the alana class trophy for the playoff mvp in 2024 she played on multiple national teams i think you're out in new york right now right taylor yes i am actually in a locker room i just got off the ice and then and then we have brock faber who's also another minnesota and you can understand my bias um brock played his high school hockey at the national development team then played for the gophers for three years he was captain of our 22-23 team that went to the national championship game he was brock was selected in the second round of the nhl draft by the la kings but fortunately was traded to the minnesota wild in the 23-24 rookie season he played in all 82 games he had a nice time of 2047 minutes which is the most ever recorded by a rookie since the stat was kept he finished second in voting for the calder memorial trophy for the nhl's top rookie and fortunately for the wild he just signed an eight-year extension which keeps him with minnesota for the foreseeable future so you can see by their credentials they're they're really um you know top players in the game right now but i think we've heard a lot about uh youth sports uh this morning so maybe taylor and brock let us know when you were growing up did you play more than one sport did you play more than than just hockey taylor yeah so originally um i started playing basketball both my parents played college basketball both my brothers actually teach me college basketball right now um so i played basketball as my main sport i started hockey when i was about um i was at eight so i started late compared to a lot of my friends um and i really just started co-ed like played outside once a week it wasn't too serious but my parents did a good job of keeping me in different sports i played basketball and hockey together up until i had to choose when i went to high school if i wanted to stay at home in lake city and play basketball if i wanted to open enroll in red wing and play hockey um even though i picked hockey in that sense i played a bunch of sports as a kid and then through high school i did track and soccer as well great brock how about you yeah i was uh i was pretty similar i was uh growing up um football was football was my number one sport um i played the least out of the year but it's definitely my favorite uh played baseball and soccer as well um and a year lacrosse um but i i really i think i started playing hockey a little younger than taylor at about the age of five or six but it was never like a um a sport i specialized in uh if you will until i was about 15 um that's when i really started to take it seriously it was more more so playing as as many sports as i could and um you know i kind of enjoyed playing all those sports and um again then like i said at 15 that's when i really started to kind of play hockey around so yeah you know so both of you two i think have been um kind of on a superstar track even kind of from a young age i'm just wondering you know how did you handle the pressure uh of these high expectations you know when you when you came into college hockey let's say um and and there was a lot of focus on you taylor how did you handle that pressure yeah um i think i give my parents a lot of props they definitely i mean growing up with my two brothers we were always very competitive but my parents made sure that you realize and you really focus on the fact that your sport doesn't define you like it's not who you are like i'm taylor heisey my sport's not going to define me by that um but i just loved what i did like he's been something that i love so much every day and i told myself when i wake up and i don't want to do it anymore i'm not going to i'm 20 i haven't got that they thought but um every day getting up and be able to do what i love and the fact that both of us get to do this as a job um technically because it doesn't feel like a job to either of us i'm assuming um so it's more so just taking those expectations and kind of put it for pressures of privilege and for me when i when i get that pressure and i feel that anxiety knowing that that is going to come whether or not you're wanting to tell them to go away or to stay so i try to nerve and take everything that i have and kind of just go back to all those times as a kid that i got on the ice and i loved it and i you know was able to go and play and just have a great time because like i said hockey doesn't define me it's just a part of who i am how about you brock how was it coming you know back to minnesota as a freshman and and you know i'm sure there were a lot of eyes on you how do you how did you handle that yeah um what taylor said the the uh pressure is a privilege i feel like um for me when i really started when i moved away to michigan to play hockey there when i was um again 15 years old um i think something we talked about a lot playing at a high level at a young age um the both of us was um the fact that there's a lot of people that would want to be in our position um you know whether um any sport it is um but just to be able to play with with friends play the game you love um and have the people around you um you know support you with everything they have i feel like that is that's such a privilege that we both um kind of grew up into and um yeah for me i didn't feel as much pressure more so just kind of gratitude for for the position i'm in obviously i i wake up the same way every day i i love the game i want to get better i want to train um and i think that had a lot to do with it for me um you know coming into the university of minnesota i it was a dream to be a gopher uh for me my whole life and um the pressure wasn't there because again i felt grateful just to be there um and grateful to learn from the the upperclassmen and great coaching staff so um yeah i i think just for me it was just the that's how i looked at it was i was grateful to be there and um you know took took every um you know every opportunity and um try to take advantage sorry try to take advantage of every opportunity if you will yeah thanks so you we have you know we have most of the folks here are or docs or athletic trainers some physical therapists you know one of the things i think that might be helpful for us and brock we'll start with you is what what have you found to be helpful from your athletic trainer or your team physician in in terms of uh communication style i mean are you an athlete that wants to know everything do you want all the information uh what have you found uh helpful to build a trust with your medical staff yeah i mean it's i think it's huge um i you know i've been fortunate enough to have great medical staffs every every place i've played um you know the the relationship is i think the biggest key in my head is um you know i think taylor could say the same thing it's um as a hockey player you want to play through injury and you don't really um you know sometimes you don't even want to know what's going on you don't want to think about the thought of having to um you know ending a career or um having to take time off because you want to be on the ice and be able to perform as best you can to help your teammates um but having the relationship with um you know the the staff and the trainers um has been huge for me obviously going through some injuries this past year even it was um it was tough but they a little bit kind of fried it out of me because i didn't want to even have to think or speak about you know taking time off um because again in sports as high level athletes that hurts you don't want to you don't want to take time off and um you want to be there for your teammates you know through the whole season so for me i i think the relationship is the number one key in having trainers that you trust um you know uh you know trust with with with your health but you know trust off the ice like i feel like i could call everything one of my trainers if i was ever ever in need ever had a problem ever had a question um and they'd all be there for me and i think that is that that has been so huge um for me um going through injury and i think that's allowed me to really put my whole trust in them and and and you know even though it hurts sometimes telling them how i feel and telling them what's what hurts and telling them what i need so um for sure the relationship is is definitely most definitely key in in my head yeah do you have some thoughts about your experience with your medical staff or your athletic trainer yeah um i like brock said i have nothing but best experience um with my training staff um whether that be when i was a kid just like life or up to the national team level now i'm blessed to have the same athletic trainer for pwhl minnesota as well as my national team um and i think getting to know her and our staff um not only helps me but it helps her to be able to communicate correctly with me because some people you know don't want to know what's going on for me i'm very much so relying on the fact that i know what's going on so i can try to help a little bit this year actually i went through um i was playing the u.s canada national team game and got hit weirdly in my shoulder and i'm blessed to not have had really any big injuries i've had small ones you just got to kind of come back from i've had a sports hernia surgery wasn't a big one but my shoulder this year i had to sit out a month um i had an ac and sc sprain and the way that i was able to communicate with um katie my trainer at the time um she just made sure i felt safe and felt that i had every option to pick what i wanted to do um to have all the details about how long i could possibly be out um the amount of time that we needed to do rehab for and she just never had a bad attitude and i think like i said the biggest thing for me is is to be able to have that open communication and to be able to have that honesty and trust in the fact that i know that she's always going to do everything that i need to be at my best and i'm always going to respect her and what she has to say so um like i said i've had the best best opportunities and people to work with in in the past and even right now so um like i said just feel really blessed and it's it's definitely that communication line that i think kind of brought talked a little bit about that's super important as well yeah thanks we're gonna have one of the other docs uh one of the docs from edmonton's got a question uh thanks uh taylor and brock for being available for us i know it's summer and uh my name is duran night i'm the head doc with the edmonton oilers um question you know as as you know i've been with the team for 20 years and i think mental health is something um that we've heard about earlier today but um maybe we'll start with brock and you know is mental when did you first start to hear about mental health and is there something that you do uh from a mental health perspective mental training um that you've relied on in your career and and and after brock taylor uh same question to you yeah i you know i think i was kind of first introduced to you know the the mental side of the game when i was um in college with the gophers um you know i i think you know my my whole life it was that was never really something that i ever talked about the mental health side of things you know it's just always physical health if you're um if you're good to play physically you're gonna play and i think um you know it's kind of a a whole a whole new um a whole new wave of information i feel like i learned um with the gophers um you know it's a lot more travel there's a lot more uh people in the crowd there there are a lot more bigger bigger games uh social media is is a bigger thing now as you're becoming a athlete um so for me it was um you know i i feel like i'm able to myself stay in touch with um making sure that i'm um doing well mentally um because you know you aren't able to perform at your highest level if you are struggling at all mentally and i feel like i'm able to to know kind of my boundaries and what i need out of myself and how i need to prepare and you know the sleep aspect the health aspect that helps me so much mentally um as much as it does physically but um i've done i haven't really done any sort of training but um more so just kind of learning about myself and what i need mentally to um you know make sure that i'm going about every single day um as physically and mentally as best i can how about you taylor yeah i would definitely echo that um i definitely learned more about um the mental health side of things in college as well uh we did a few um sessions with our sports uh psychologist and it's definitely an interesting way of learning how to kind of train yourself to think a certain way and deal with situations a certain way and i i don't think if i wouldn't have met with her i ended up meeting with her my entire junior and senior year i do every like once a month just a little check-in and sometimes it's just nice to have someone to listen to not even your problems just things you want to walk work through talk through it's easy to have someone there who is like a helping hand or an ear to listen to and it's funny now our sports psychologist is uh from the u is now ours with team usa so it's fun for us to look back on the things that i've you know overcome from college whether that be high expectations whether that be um nervousness um or coming back from injury after i um got injured in college a little bit um i obviously as a hockey player brock could probably say the same thing you never want to sit out and when they say two months you're like no i can get back in a month when they say four months you're like no i think i can get back in three um so i think this year in in um pro it was cool because i i kind of felt a lot of emotions when it came to my injury sitting out in the middle of the year and having such high expectations after being that first overall draft pick and coming into the year and um having to take that month and a half off i think talking to a sports psych and just figuring out my emotions of how i can deal with an injury and how i can be grateful for the fact that now i feel how other people who either maybe are not playing or don't get the ice time that i do i had to sit and watch and truly kind of think about my emotions and always remember to be grateful when it comes to when i got back on the ice and i think when i did get back on the ice this year after talking to a lot of people about it i was very grateful and i think i was able to play with a new like rejuvenation of um the way that i was able to play and who who i was able to play with didn't matter anymore and people in the sands it was more so just happy to be there and um i always say everything happens for a reason no one wants to be injured but having a great support system and support staff is definitely one of the biggest things so dr clucci from the red wings wants to ask a question and then then i know you guys probably got to go you're they're probably waiting for you yeah this is a personal question on brock the roman numeral on your forearm there what's the significance oh uh it's it's uh my mother's birthday um so uh yeah good question my mother's birthday and roman numerals you got it that's right well i i gotta tell you i really appreciate you two taking uh time off i know you're super busy um but i think your perspective is really valuable for this audience so thanks have a good day thank you so much awesome thanks doc see you guys

sports medicine

hockey

multi-sport participation

injury management

diversity in sports

African Americans in hockey

community outreach

long-term athlete development

concussions

mental health

psychological readiness

mindfulness

cognitive-behavioral therapy