Morrisette Bill to Curb Student Athlete Head Injuries Passes Oregon Senate

The bill is informally named “Max’s Law,” in honor of Max Conradt, who suffered a permanent traumatic brain injury in 2001 football games for Waldport High School.

The bill is informally named “Max’s Law,” in honor of Max Conradt, who suffered a permanent traumatic brain injury in 2001 football games for Waldport High School. Courtesy: throughmyeye.wordpress.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - A bill aimed at reducing permanent brain injuries to members of school athletic teams passed the Oregon Senate unanimously on Tuesday.

Sponsored by Senator Bill Morrisette, at the request of the Brain Injury Association of Oregon, SB 348 would restrict the return of student athletes to practice or games when they show signs of a concussion. And it would require annual training of coaches in every school sport – not just football -- on how to recognize concussion symptoms and get proper medical treatment for athletes with such symptoms.

The law created by the bill will say to all coaches, “We have to be much more careful, more cautious,” in dealing with head injuries, Morrisette told the Senate. After football, the school sport with the most head injuries is girl’s soccer, he said.

Senator Alan Bates, an Ashland physician who has worked with school athletic teams for 30 years, said the law will be an important tool in dealing with coaches who are often under pressure to return a head-injured star athlete to an important game.

The bill is informally named “Max’s Law,” in honor of Max Conradt, who suffered a permanent traumatic brain injury in 2001 football games for Waldport High School. Conradt currently lives in an assisted-living facility for brain-injured adults in Salem.

“I want to advertise it,” Conradt said of the bill in an earlier interview with the Eugene Register-Guard. “I can’t wait to get it passed.”

His father Ralph Conradt, is a video producer who now lives in Bend. When the bill was in the Senate Education Committee, he showed committee members a four-minute video about Max’s injury and subsequent problems. He is also working on a full-length documentary about Max.

Morrisette sponsored a law in the 2003 legislative session that now requires children 15 and under to wear helmets while riding scooters, skateboards or in-line skates. He is also the sponsor of several other bills this session for the Brain Injury Association.

SB 348 now goes to the House of Representatives for action there.

Source: Oregon Legislature