Travel column: Parents, take responsibility for your child’s arm care

Parents can help enforce PitchSmart guidelines when their children are on multiple teams. (Getty Images)

As a parent, one of the hardest things to experience is an overuse injury caused to your young athlete. Overuse injuries usually start with some form of mental fatigue, physical fatigue, or combination of both.

When an injury follows the overuse, we often reflect on those moments of fatigue in our young athletes as warning signs that we likely overlooked.  As the caretaker of your son or daughter, it can feel just as painful to not have heeded the warning signs and research that is available to prevent what has happened.

As players all over the region kick off their baseball seasons, it’s important to understand that the biggest area for overuse injuries in youth baseball is on the mound.  To contend with overuse injuries caused by pitching, USA Baseball and the MLB have partnered together to provide research and resources to promote safe pitching practices through their PitchSmart guidelines.

These guidelines have never been more important to the health of our kids. With the trends we are seeing in the lengthening of athletic seasons across all sports, earlier start times to baseball winter development, and the explosion of youth, travel and showcase opportunities for New England baseball players, PitchSmart guidelines (attached at the bottom) have never been more relevant in our area.

But who is responsible for enforcing it? The answer is you, Mom and Dad.

I understand what some may be asking:

• “What about the coach? Shouldn’t they know?”

• “What about the program? Shouldn’t they be tracking?”

And I agree… keeping young athletes healthy is not a one-person job, but simply put, the parents are the ones with the full visibility into their child. Your player’s coach is likely trying his best, but it’s hard for him or her to keep track of how many pitches 12 players pitched in their rec games during the week or even how many total innings their pitchers have pitched over the course of the year. 

Parents: I’m imploring you to take control of the tracking of your child’s pitching. Your child is likely always going to want to take the ball and pitch when the coach asks him. Don’t leave it to the coach or player’s decision.  

By tracking pitch counts and innings pitched for your child, you can be proactive in communication to coaches to protect your child and allow your young athlete’s arm to recover at the appropriate intervals. 

As we head out to the fields for the spring season, start tracking your child’s pitching output. As the season progresses, you’ll feel a lot better knowing that you’re able to appropriately navigate your child’s health with data directly from your eyes and combine that with guidelines created by some of the top minds in youth athletic health.

Enjoy the games!