By Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – A youth football league that represents 40 teams and 1,300 players south of Chicago is happy there won’t be a vote in the Illinois House on a bill to ban youth tackle football this year, but the sponsor of the measure plans to continue to push for it.
State Rep. Carol Sente, D-Vernon Hills, said she won’t call House Bill 4341, which would ban contact sports for those younger than 12, because she doesn’t have the votes.
“If something changes, I still have an opportunity to bring it up during veto session,” Sente said. “I hope the issues remains alive. I think it’s a very important one.”
Sente said her bill is meant to curb chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease caused from repeated hits to the head.
Mike Barry, president of the Illinois 8 Youth Tackle Football League, said Sente’s bill was outlandish to begin with. He said youth football teaches heads-up tackling and not spearheaded tackling as is seen in the National Football League.
“The NFL, all those players still lead with the crown of their head,” Barry said. “But we teach our kids to keep their head up, to tackle with their heads up. So their heads aren’t down, they’re not going helmet to helmet.”
He said the display in a committee hearing on the bill last month of a grown man using one helmet to smash repeatedly against a dummy wearing a “cheap” helmet was a complete mischaracterization of youth football.
“There’s very rarely any youth sporting event where there’s going to be that kind of contact,” Barry said.
Despite not planning to call the bill for a vote, Sente said she’s passionate about the issue.
“This is coming. I just really believe it’s coming,” she said. “I was trying to do this to actually protect kids’ brains and protect football. I’m not against football.”
Barry said he’s fine with Sente wanting to raise awareness about the dangers of concussions, but not by banning parents from allowing their kids to play youth football.
“I understand it. I get it,” Barry said. “But the game is going to change. The game has evolved. What you’ll end up seeing here in the next couple of years I would probably say is no kickoffs and no kickoff returns.”
Barry’s league has teams in a 75-mile radius in Manteno, Peotone, Cole City, Braidwood, Bloomington, Braidwood and Sandwich.
“There’s several other leagues that are around us that are on the same boat that we are,” he said. “They’re fighting the same battle that we are. It’s sad that football has been picked out because our participation numbers have been slowly decreasing throughout the years.”
