Helping to keep kids safe playing soccer is of interest to all, so here are links to a series of documents containing information on soccer health and injury prevention.

Injury Prevention:

1. Injury Prevention Guide for coaches, athletes (ages 6-14) and parents  

This is a guide put together by The Canadian Soccer Association and Thinkfirst.  Thinkfirst Foundation is a Canadian organization educating players, parents and coaches about brain injury and sport safety.

2. The 11+

The 11+ is a 30 minute soccer specific warm-up found to reduce injuries put together by FIFA’s 2009 sports science team.

Concussions in soccer:

A couple of important points:

• You don't have to lose consciousness to have a concussion.
• No player should continue to play if a concussion has occurred (until further evaluation).

The following articles are from the ThinkFirst website and supported by Soccer Canada:

1. Concussion information for coaches
2. Concussion information for parents & athletes
3. Return to play guidelines after concussion

Health and Fitness:

Health and Fitness for the Female Football Player:   This is a link to a health and fitness guide for female players from FIFA and covers many aspects of good sports health. The content in this guide is also pertinent to male players. (takes awhile to download - 4.4 MB)

Coaching kids with asthma:

Winning with Asthma: A web video that covers information that could be helpful to any coaches who have a kid on their team with Asthma.