Why what Trinity Wall Street is doing is important

Since I started this blog a few years ago a number of people (not a big number, but big enough to think about) have made comments like this to me: (this is a composite of several questions)

"We would love to have sports in our church, but we're tucked into the middle of a city block, and the only open area around us is the alley where the super takes the trash out. We do have a church hall, but it isn't very big, and somebody put a huge crystal chandelier right in the middle of the room about 15 years ago, and we don't dare move it, and even if we did, all the windows are Tiffany glass, so we can't play inside either. Furthermore, the whole congregation is 70+ years old."

When I mention Trinity Wall Street, I'm referring, of course, to their recent announcement that they will be sponsoring two Little League teams, and encourage their congregation to attend games and cheer the kids on.

And, while the average age of their congregation isn't 70+, they are surrounded by skyscrapers and there's no place to play outside, except for the (historic) graveyard. In other words, they can't really play outside.

What they do have is sufficient money to sponsor two Little League teams (who will be playing on athletic fields built as part of the deal when real estate developers put up some housing on Hudson River landfill.

Let's assume that your parish can't underwrite two Little League teams. But what you can do is donate enough to a local soccer or baseball or basketball or other youth sports organization for one needy kid to play for one season. In our area, to do this for a needy travel soccer kid, it's about $100. In more affluent areas, it's probably twice or three times that. Ask the volunteers who run the leagues or the teams. You may find you get a really warm welcome.

Concussion aftereffects

If you're involved with sports in any capacity, there's no doubt that by now you have seen the preliminary information about the evident correlation between having played professional football or having boxed and dementia. Bottom line seems to be that "punch drunk boxers" were only the tip of the iceberg -- that repeated concussions in any sport can lead to early dementia.

Pro football, pretty much a sacred cow in the US, has been the thin entering wedge regarding the possibility that having the concussion delivered by a fist is necessary for dementia to result -- in other words, we're learning that -- DUUUH -- concussions are bad to have!

Here's a link to what could easily be an outlier -- but possibly not -- who had the telltale markers of trauma-induced dementia but neither boxed nor played pro football (he had played college football). http://tiny.cc/EKsf9 Outlier or not, it's worth reading.

Implications for church sports programs involve the clear necessity to ask seriously if it is appropriate for a church to sponsor or offer programs in sports that appear to involve a high risk of trauma-related dementia. Obviously, boxing and football fall in this category. Both may represent ways "out of the ghetto" and may have roles in reclaiming lives. But there may be better choices, ones that do not entail what appears to correlate the inherent risk of dementia with success.