WIAA to offer concussion insurance for athletes
STEVENS POINT – Beginning next school year, every WIAA athlete will be covered by concussion insurance.
Tuesday the Board of Control unanimously approved a policy with Dissinger Reed. The HeadStrong Concussion Insurance Program will provide the approximately 80,000 WIAA athletes in grades 6-12 with up to $25,000 of coverage per injury.
The plan costs $1.50 per athlete and covers any student participating in any practice or game sanctioned by the WIAA. For claims, a student's insurance will be filled first and then the HeadStrong Insurance would serve as a secondary insurance that covers the cost of deductibles or co-pays.
The official start date of the policy is Aug. 1, the first day of the WIAA’s new fiscal year.
“The potential cost to a kid or a family should not be the reason that they don’t get the diagnosis, the care, the follow-up treatment that they should have if there is a concussion,” WIAA executive director Dave Anderson said. “This is good for kids.”
Wisconsin is the fourth state to cover its athletes with this type of insurance. It follows Michigan, Montana and Arizona.
The board approved the adoption of the concussion insurance during the same meeting it also approved an increase of regional tournament ticket prices from $4 to $5. Part of the additional proceeds from that increase will be used to cover the cost of the insurance, which is about $121,000 per year.
How many concussions the plan could cover is unclear. The WIAA doesn’t keep track of concussion totals.
Adding the plan, however, gives the WIAA another example of how it is trying to protect its athletes when it comes to concussions and could provide the organization another layer of protection should it be subject of a lawsuit.
“We have a long history of trying to do good things with and around head injury,” Anderson said. “We’re the first state that required a kid not to be able to return if they were suspected to be unconscious.
“And if we ever have to defend ourselves in one of those sort of concussion lawsuits, it may or may not make any difference, but we will be able to point to the fact that we’ve done a lot of things over a lot of years in a moral and conscientious sort of way to try to do things right.”
Greenfield violations: Deputy director Wade Labecki informed the board of the recruiting violations the Greenfield district reported to the WIAA this week.
“They hired a football coach who had somehow been involved in students transferring to that school from Milwaukee Public Schools, about five of them,” he said. “This came to our attention back in February before (state) wrestling, the 21st of February. I sent a note down there. Once they started digging they found there were fraudulent addresses as well.”
When discussing the matter Monday, Greenfield athletic director Trent Lower said he couldn’t put a number on how many kids were involved. Also, while the district said the individual who recruited those students was no longer employed by the district, it didn’t name the person who allegedly committed the violation.
RELATED: Football players tried to fraudulently enroll at Greenfield, distract says
Two weeks ago, Shane Covington, the school’s head coach last season, told local television stations that he had been forced to resign and students rallied in hopes of having him retained as coach. Monday he told Fox 6 news that he did not have any involvement with any effort to get students to enroll at the school.
Usually, when a transfer student is deemed ineligible to compete at his or her new school, the individual has the option of returning to his or her former high school and become immediately eligible. That is not the case in this situation. Because these students were found to have intentionally provided false information to Greenfield, they are ineligible for one calendar year at any WIAA school.