This year Craig signed up to coach Ed’s soccer team. Previously he’s been assistant coach, but this year they were short on volunteers. So part of his “training” is doing an online course in safety and procedures and such.
And generally the training is reasonable and helpful and pretty much what you’d expect. Except when you get to this instructions for what to do… well, I’m not sure when you’d need to use a tourniquet at a 7 year old’s soccer game, but just in case, now we know.
Step Four: Tourniquet should be used if the other methods fail. Place the tourniquet between the heart and the wound, as close to the wound as possible, and tighten until the bleeding stops. Attach a note to the victim with the date, time and location of tourniquet. Cover victim to prevent shock.
And that’s it. Attach a note and then what?
Step Five: take victim to hospital? Notify parents? Give player a red card? Resume play?
Victim? Was this mistakenly copied from some bionuclear fallout radiation training plan? Because this shit is scary!
Man. This is going to be one hell of a season.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Hmm…I don’t think that’s in the positive coaching alliance training. I thought for AYSO volunteers it was simply don’t touch the kids inappropriately. My rule of thumb btw was always if dad is coaching no need for mom to volunteer, but after some pitiful team managers I may be stepping up this year.
I guess this is why you have to go to all of your kids games.
You’d hate come to pick up your child and find him tagged and covered with a tarp – just sort of off to the side.
I second Sarah. It would be a total bummer to come pick up your kid after the game to find him with a tourniquet and a note. Hysterical.
This is why I only sign up to be the team parent. It’s all about getting people to bring their damn snack on the day they sign up (which you know is more complicated than rocket science). I now know that tourniquets are the coach’s responsibility.
Dude, what kind of soccer are they playing to have deadly wounds? Did you guys superglue razor blades to the ball?
Robyn, here in Silicon Valley we play to *win*!
Don’t “attach a note”. With a Sharpie, write a big “T” with the time. Don’t bother with a date. If a tourniquet is on for more than a day, well, bye bye limb.
But, modern first aid doesn’t teach tourniquets because they are so often misused.Those are for “when help is delayed”, usually taught as Wilderness First Aid, but also handy for earthquakes.
In a city, by the time you figure out how to tie the danged thing, the firefighters are already there.
So, tell Craig to forget all that nonsense about tourniquets and focus on “fun, fair, and safe”.
My husband almost wanted to coach this year, until he found out about all the online training and in-person training for AYSO.
My D. is not even on the big kids team yet (he’s 6). But they go hard core starting age 6… !
Just found your site… love this post… not even anything about dialing 9- 1- 1? So, is he required to carry post-it’s in his pocket or a small note pad and duct tape?
I find that EVERYTHING with kids these days is hard-core. Kids don’t just simply go outside and find somebody to play with. Everything is organized, with rules and adults and uniforms…and if a kid steps out of line, all hell comes down on him! (My kid pushed another kid at camp and the counselors called the PARAMEDICS! They came and pronounced absolutely nothing wrong with the kid. Holy moley — talk about hard-core!)
This post is hysterical; makes me wonder what stressed-out adult wrote it and never finished it before it was copied and sent to parents. Surely there was some step to follow pinning a note to the “victim”!
I started out searching to find if TJ Bearytales was creepy to anyone else and came across your site………..then somehow ended up here. Let me tell you that between this post and the comments I nearl peed my pants, seriously. I have cried so hard from laughing tears are rolling down my neck………I’ve had a really rough week so this was perfect. I look forward to keeping up with your blog.
Thanks Amanda ;)
Isn’t the idea of a note kind of outdated? Why not “snap a shot of injury with your iPhone & send to parent” or “see, injured player app.”
:-)
Craziness!
OMG, LOL, this is hysterical! Clearly our soccer youth association is full of slackers as we have no deadly wounds in our games. In Northern Virginia we consider ourselves hard core, but I’ll have to tell all the parents we’re not up to Silicon Valley standards…