Head injuries - not just a concern for athletes

Head injuries are at the forefront of health concerns in college sports today, but here are some normal college activities where a typical student could suffer a concussion or worse.

1. “Traying”

Or at least that’s what they call it at Fairfield University in Connecticut. All you need is some snow and a lunch tray, and you have extreme sledding. It looks safe enough, but a lunch tray can barely hold a full meal from the commons, let alone a human being.

Gerard Viola, a senior at Fairfield, would attest to that, but he can’t remember what happened. “Who thinks about hitting a tree?” Viola said. “According to sources, I went off a ramp. I probably thought it was cool.”

After that, he got up, walked back up the hill and proceeded to vomit all over the snow. Viola had no idea where he was. His friends called an ambulance and he woke up the following morning in a hospital. He had lost an entire day of memory, but he was strangely unafraid. “I would still go sledding with my kids and stuff when I get older,” he said.

2. Playing football

Students do it, too, except they do it without pads. Students don’t have the athleticism of student-athletes, but they like to think they do.

Pickup tackle football is the most dangerous and it’s not uncommon on public campus fields. It can get physical. The talent of the players may be minimal or non-existent, but that doesn’t diminish the fun of the game and the desire to win. Concussions can occur through head-to-head collisions and from backlash of the head hitting ground.

3. Icy intoxication

In many northern schools, the weather in the winter can be erratic. The one constant is ice, which spreads faster at night when it’s colder. Many campuses are too large to salt immediately, so the ice often coats the sidewalks for hours.

College students go out at night and some may walk around drunk. Some of the women are wearing high heels, which prove precarious even in the warmest conditions. Put all these factors together and they exponentially raise the probability of a head injury.

Most of the time, it’s a harmless spill: A friend slips and falls to the ground, but they laugh it off with nothing worse than a small bruise. But the next tumble could be more serious to the drunken individual whose head is already spinning out of control.

4. Reckless travel

Some college students have cars. A few drive them without seat belts as if they are on a highway in the middle of Montana rather than a crowded road in the middle of campus.

Others ride bikes or skateboards without helmets, which isn’t a huge safety risk. However, it is when they impetuously weave through moving traffic and pedestrians on their way to point B.

This breach in sidewalk etiquette equally applies to walkers, whose incessant texting often results in a missed curb or bump. Any of the above could cause a head injury.

5. Little things

Don’t smash a bottle/can on your head. Don’t pick a fight with someone who lightly brushes up against you. Don’t enter and exit buildings through windows, especially if they are on the second floor or higher.

Don’t jolt awake on the bottom half of a bunk bed. Don’t run down steep slopes. Close the cabinet doors in your kitchen. Test the range of motion in your shower. Use a bathmat in the bathroom. Respect stairs.

Dan Norton is a Summer 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.