I agree. Heading soccer balls is proven to at least temporarily reduce IQ. I've never let my kids play that sport.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/health/soccer-headers-concussi...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/health/soccer-headers-concussi...
Swimming is also relatively safe. Distance running might result in repetitive stress injury, but it won't kill you.
Slow-pitch softball eliminates most of the risks from baseball. Hit by pitch and RSI from pitching are the dangers there.
Cycling removes some of the RSI risk from distance running, but replaces it with higher-speed impacts, usually into hard surfaces.
Edit: It depends on your definition of "team sport", really. If you define it such that you can't meaningfully separate out any individual performances, you're cutting out all relay-type competitions from the start. If you say archery is not a team sport, then neither is a swimming relay race. Where do you draw the line? What's the minimum number of participants that have to work together to qualify as a team?
Crew, tennis, baseball, swimming, golf, all of track and field, etc.
Of the youth sports I'm involved with flag football and baseball are the two safest (especially if you're not a pitcher). Then basketball sits in the middle as pretty safe. The main worry in basketball is running into someone going for the ball. I'd put soccer and tackle football as the most dangerous (tackle football being more dangerous). If they eliminate heading out of youth soccer, it would move it into the basketball level of safety.
I'm not sure there is any way to change tackle football to make it reasonably safe for kids.
Washington Post: 14 men participating in the study. Each was asked to perform a rotational header — redirecting the soccer ball — 20 consecutive times during 10-minute sessions.
tiny sample size + 20 consecutive headers in 10 minutes is astronomically rare occurrence in soccer, 3 headers in 10 minutes is incredibly rare. Even with this methodology they report *the alterations appeared to clear within 24 hours.
CNN: "Concussions in soccer mostly occur from player-to-player and player-to-ground contact. Heading is involved in only 15% to 25% of concussions in soccer, and most of those are a result of poorly executed headers where two players hit heads,"
So most concussions are from bumping heads, which is a possibility in any contact sport.
For what it's worth, this is a completely reasonable number. In a game situation, sure, headers aren't that common. But during my youth soccer days, we practiced at least twice as often as we played and practice with headers was quite common. Ironically, they were trying to teach us the proper technique so that we wouldn't hurt ourselves. I can easily imagine practice sessions in which we headed the ball at least 3 times as often as that 20 per 10 min number.
Honest question, bc at the end of the day, beyond all scientific studies, it is parents who will define which sports are popular and actually played.