National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Jul 21, 2010 4:16:46 PM

The Division II Management Council addressed several important health and safety matters during its meeting in Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday.

The Council hopped on board on a pair of Association-wide matters, voting to recommend sponsorship of concussion-management legislation and acknowledging a Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports proposal to make more efficient use of drug-testing resources.

The group also referred a proposal to mandate testing for sickle-cell trait at Division II institutions back to the Legislation Committee and reacted to a spike in positive marijuana tests at Division II championships.

The concussion-management legislation calls for each Division II institution to have, as a condition of membership, a copy of a concussion-management plan for its student-athletes on file. Among other things, the plans are to detail the following:

• An annual process that ensures student-athletes are educated about the signs and symptoms of concussions;
• A process the ensures a student-athlete who exhibits signs, symptoms or behaviors consistent with a concussion shall be removed from athletics activities and evaluated by a medical staff member with experience in the evaluation and management of concussions;
• A polity the precludes a student-athlete diagnosed with a concussion from returning to athletic activity for at least the remainder of that calendar day; and
• A policy that requires medical clearance for a student-athlete diagnosed with a concussion to return to athletics activity as determined by a physician or the physician's designee.

In addition to the requirement for a concussion-management plan, the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Committee, in concert with the competitive-safeguards committee, previously asked all NCAA playing rules committees to assess rules to ensure that players with possible concussions would be removed from play and not permitted to return without medical clearance. Those changes will be in place for the 2010-11 academic year.

Presidential governing bodies in all three divisions will review the proposal for mandatory concussion plans in August. The use of Division II conference grant money would be permitted to support such plans.

Drug-testing changes

The proposed modifications to the drug-testing plan, developed by the National Center for Drug Free Sport and endorsed in June by the competitive-safeguards committee, would call for the following changes in the year-round program:

• Increase the number of repeat tests.
• Not include a pre-ordained number of samples to be collected in repeat testing to allow for more repeat testing sites.
• Repeat testing could include weighted/targeted tests (for example, high-risk student-athletes, highly ranked athletes, redshirts or injured student-athletes, or any combination thereof).
• For repeat testing, institutions and student-athletes possibly could receive no prior notification.
• Ephedra would be eliminated from year-round testing (ephedra is not commonly available since the government banned the sale of ephedra-containing substances in 2004).

For the championship program, testing for steroids could be targeted for some high-risk championship events and reduced or eliminated at events where the risk of use is low.

The plan will be presented to the Executive Committee next month for ultimate approval.

Sickle-cell trait testing

The Legislation Committee had developed a proposal to require a sickle-cell trait test for all incoming student-athletes who could not provide the results of a previous test. The proposal was modeled after Division I legislation that was adopted earlier this year and is effective August 1 of this year.

While Management Council members clearly supported the purpose of the proposal, they were concerned about how the proposal, as written, might leave certain kinds of student-athletes untested and undiagnosed. Some members also questioned whether requirements to test for sickle-cell trait and other dangerous conditions would be better administered locally.

The Council also was informed that the price for screening for sickle-cell trait has jumped dramatically since Division I implemented its requirement. Each screen cost about $5 at the beginning of the Division I program, but the demand has increased the cost, in some cases by a factor of 10.

Ultimately, the proposal was referred back to the Legislation Committee for further review and discussions. However, the Management Council members agreed the continued education of the Division II membership is needed in this area and will look for ways to provide greater education to the membership this fall.

Marijuana tests

The jump in marijuana positives at 2009-10 Division II championships was striking, although not necessarily conclusive. In all, 5.8 percent of Division II student-athletes tested showed positive for marijuana – much greater than the 1.5 percent positive rate in Division I and almost three times higher than the 2008-09 results for Division II.

Many of the positives came from the early rounds of the Division II Men's Basketball Championship. To determine if the outcome was an anomaly or a trend, the Management Council directed that the early rounds of the men's basketball championship be tested again in 2011.