Over the span of 13 years, there have been more than 640,000 cases of insect-borne illnesses including Zika, West Nile, and Lyme disease. In 2016 alone, there were more than 96,000 cases, compared to the 27,000 in 2004.

“The numbers on some of these diseases have gone to astronomical levels,” said the CDC’s director of vector-borne diseases Lyle Petersen, as reported by the New York Times.

In particular, the number of tickborne diseases has more than doubled since 2004, with Lyme disease accounting for 82 percent. And that’s just reported cases. In the past, the CDC has estimated that 300,000 people are infected with Lyme disease each year, though fewer than 40,000 of those cases are reported.

Now, the weather is warming and health experts believe this summer will be plagued by a rising number of disease-carrying ticks. Despite the troubling outlook and jump in Lyme disease cases already being reported, doctors say there are some important steps you can take to prevent becoming infected.

The CDC says that if a tick is found attached to you early enough, there is still time to avoid infection. Ticks reportedly need to be attached to a person for 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria that transmits Lyme is passed to the bite victim. “It is important to carry out a regular tick check after participating in outdoor activities,” a spokesman for Public Health England said, via International Business Times.

Doctors also warn that ticks like to climb upwards and will likely travel up a person’s leg before attaching themselves. “They often attach where there was a constriction of clothing, like around the waistline,” Barbara Thorne of the University of Maryland told NPR. “They’re small, but they’re not invisible.”

Here are some steps you can take to prevent yourself from being bitten by a tick (via the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene)

• Stay on cleared paths and hiking trails when walking in heavily wooded areas.

• Wear light-colored clothing to allow you to better see ticks that crawl on your clothing. Wear long-sleeved shirts and tuck your pant legs into your socks so that ticks cannot crawl up the inside of your pant legs.
• Spray your shoes with the insecticide as well.
• Wear a hat and bandana around your neck.

• Apply repellents containing DEET to prevent ticks from attaching.

• Check for ticks on your body and clothing after returning from wooded, brushy, or tall, grassy areas and remove any ticks you find on you, your child or your pet.

• Keep in mind that young ticks are very small (about the size of a poppy seed), so seek help to inspect not easily reachable areas. Be sure to look carefully in areas of the body where hair is present, since it may make it difficult to see the ticks. Adult ticks are about the size of an apple seed.

• Shower after being in an area with ticks, and promptly put clothes in a dryer on high heat to kill ticks.

• Speak to your vet about tick prevention products for your pet dogs and cats.

• Remove leaf litter and debris to reduce the likelihood of ticks around the home.

• If you get a rash or a fever, let the doctor know if you may have been exposed to ticks, even if you don’t remember having a tick bite.

According to a study published in the Journal of Insect Science, spray-on repellents containing DEET or PMD (oil of lemon eucalyptus) are your best defense against mosquitoes. You can check out the Environmental Protection Agency’s search tool to help you find the right product.

You can also opt for clothes pre-treated with permethrin and spraying shoes with the insecticide. There are studies that show that just protecting your feet can do an amazing job against ticks because they tend to be low to the ground, so their entry point is that they often climb up on your shoes and keep going and get to your skin.

And if you’re worried about ticks in your yard, Linda Giampa, executive director of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, offers this tip: “Fill toilet-paper tubes with permethrin-sprayed cotton and scatter them under the bushes around your yard. Local squirrels, mice and other rodents can take them back to their nests, killing the ticks they carry.”

If bitten, getting treatment in the early stages is vital. Tick bites leave a large bull’s eye-shaped rash on the skin. Lyme disease and other infections can be treated with antibiotics like doxycycline or amoxicillin if detected early enough. Early signs that a person has been infected include fever, chills, fatigue, and joint pain.

The CDC added that the number of diseases transmitted from mosquito, tick, and flea bites has tripled from 2004 to 2016. Lyme disease is one of the most common illnesses a tick bite can infect humans with. If left untreated, Lyme disease can eventually lead to inflammation of the brain and infections of the nervous system.

Every coach goes through it. There is a disgruntled father in the stands, or you receive an email laced with complaints from a concerned mother. It only takes one or two parents thinking about your program in a negative light for that sentiment to spread like wildfire. Fractured parent-coach relationships can undermine what you’re trying to accomplish with your team and almost always lead to conflicts.

Positive parent-coach relationships not only create a more harmonious environment for your program, they also greatly aid in the overall development of individual players and your team. This is why fostering effective parent-coach bonds are essential to building any program or running any team, regardless of the sport or level of play.

Here are some keys to developing effective parent-coach relationships.

1. A parent-coach communication plan.

Have a parent-coach communication plan in place. It’s important to have a plan in place to prepare for the most common parent-coach issues that you face throughout the course of a season. Some of the possible conflicts you might face include scheduling, playing time, injuries, your level of success, style of play, player roles, differing opinions on coaching strategy and fan behavior in the stands. You need to decide with your staff the best way to handle each challenge.

You also must develop expectations and guidelines that drive your parent-coach communication plan. Establishing boundaries between parents and coaches is an essential component.

2. Communicate plan to parents, players and coaches. 

After you develop a plan, make sure you communicate it to everyone in your program. Hold a parent meeting to present your guidelines and expectations, and discuss any questions they might have. Set clear expectations at the beginning of the season and constantly reinforce your plan as it progresses.

3. Build a solid level of trust. 

It’s to your benefit as a coach to make a concerted effort to build a high level of trust between yourself and parents in your program. Your players’ parents need to know that you always have the best interests of their children in mind.

There are many ways in which you can help foster this trust. Be fair with everyone on your team, though being fair doesn’t always mean being equal. Communicate and reinforce your intentions as a coach, show parents and athletes on a consistent basis that you genuinely care about their well being and development, and become invested in their success inside and outside the competitive arena.

Although you’ll never get parents to agree completely with every single decision you make, established trust makes it clear to them you always will do your best to help their children.

4. Give parents ownership in your program.

Just as players need to feel like they have a stake in the success of your team, parents need to feel the same way. So give them ownership.

If your players’ parents feel like they’re invested in the overall success of your team and program, they become more committed to helping out and ensuring that things go smoothly. They need to feel like they are a part of the overall operation of your program. Obviously, if parents feel like they have too much ownership, it can backfire. They might attempt to exert too much influence in the day-to-day operations of your program.

The level of involvement that you want them to have needs to be made clear and constantly reinforced. The best way to get them involved while maintaining proper boundaries is to give them several activities to organize or run. Here are some examples:

• Organize team dinners
• Help run the concession stand at games
• Assist with fundraising activities

5. Be clear/concise when engaging in parent-coach communication. 

Make sure that you’re clear and concise when communicating with parents. When possible, think through what you’re going to say and what you want to accomplish before speaking with them. You don’t want them to misconstrue your message and what your true intentions are. When you are clear and concise, there is little room for misinterpretation.

Also, keep a log of all of the times you communicate with each parent in your program and take notes of what was discussed. This way you have a reference point to return to at a later date if needed.

6. Create an environment where parents feel you are approachable. 

Make sure parents know that while there is certain protocol in place when contacting a coach, there is an open-door policy in regards to parent-coach communications in your program. Parents need to feel that you’re approachable and willing to address their legitimate concerns.

7. Take a solution-based approach when confronted with issues. 

Instead of dwelling on the problem, turn your attention to finding a solution. You could spend hours discussing the details of every conflict you’re confronted with, but you wouldn’t accomplish very much taking that approach. As soon as you move toward finding a solution in the present, both parties feel a sense of relief.

8. The perspective of parents might differ from the coach’s.

It’s important to understand that your athletes’ parents always have their child’s best interests in mind. Coaches, on the other hand, consider individuals and the team. Although these two perspectives might match up at times, they often come in conflict with each other.

When conflicts such as these arise, it doesn’t necessarily mean the parents are wrong. It’s important to communicate this difference in perspective and reach a common understanding that compromises might have to be made for the sake of the team’s success.

Even with an effective parent-coach communication plan in place, not everything will go smoothly for you. No matter how well you handle each situation, there always will be personality conflicts and misunderstandings. When they arise, you must stay calm and professional. Don’t take it personally. You need to remember that the majority of parents don’t have malicious intent; they are simply trying to protect their child to the best of their ability.

How you handle these situations determines the overall success of your program and the development of each individual player on your team.

A warm-up program developed specially for children reduces soccer injuries by around 50 percent. Sports scientists from the University of Basel reported these findings in the academic journal Sports Medicine. A total of 243 teams comprising around 3,900 children from four European countries took part in the study.

The characteristics of soccer injuries in children differ from those seen in young people and adults. “For example, children are more likely to suffer broken bones or injuries to the upper extremities,” says sports scientist Dr. Oliver Faude from the University of Basel. Until now, however, epidemiological data on soccer injuries in this age group has been scarce.

Warm-up for young soccer players

Based on studies into the characteristics of soccer injuries in children carried out by Dr. Roland Rössler from the University of Basel’s Department of Sport, Exercise and Health, an international team of experts developed a 20-minute warm-up. The program “11 + Kids” comprises seven warm-up exercises to be performed at the start of the children’s regular soccer training sessions.

Under the leadership of Oliver Faude and Roland Rössler, an international research group has now scientifically tested the warm-up program for children’s soccer for the first time. A total of 3,895 players between the ages of 7 and 13 from Switzerland, Germany, Czechia and the Netherlands took part in the large-scale study.

Many injuries can be prevented

While the control group went about their training as normal, the intervention group warmed up regularly with the special “11 + Kids” program. After one soccer season, the injury rate of the team that followed the program was 48 percent lower than the control group, while the rate of severe injury fell by as much as 74 percent.

The results of the FIFA-backed study show that an appropriate warm-up program can help prevent a large percentage of injuries provided it is performed at least once, and preferably twice, per week.

The above content is a press release from the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Image by Derek Jensen