Future Stars Camps Blog – Sports, Kids, Camp!

Meet Craig Moccia as he joined Future Stars Camps for his first summer in the Health Office. 

With the new year coming up and possible intentions for including a healthier life-style, you may be considering adding a sport to your child's schedule of activities.  There are so many reasons to get your child engaged in sports and RealBuzz.com shares some health and fitness benefits that playing a sport provides:

Having a chronic health condition doesn’t mean that your child has to sit out of the game. Plenty of athletes have health issues that don’t stop them from practicing, playing and competing. One of the major chronic conditions that affects athletes is type 1 diabetes. Pro football players Jay Cutler and Kendall Simmons have it, and so do basketball players Chris Dudley and Adam Morrison, and baseball player Ron Santo. Formerly known just as juvenile diabetes, type 1 often has an onset in childhood or adolescence (but it’s also possible to develop it as an adult as well). People with this disease do not produce insulin on their own. That means they need to monitor their blood sugar, watch what they eat and take insulin injections. Whether your child has this chronic condition or you coach a child with it, understanding how type 1 diabetes and sports impacts each other is critical for the athlete’s health and success.

A sprain, a strain, or a broken bone. Your child is injured. Injuries during athletics are common. There are more than 3.5 million childhood sports-related injuries per year, according to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Whether your child’s injury is fairly minor or it’s much more major, it’s likely that they’ll have to sit on the sidelines – at least temporarily. Here’s where the problem comes in. Your child understands the issues that come along with injuries. The pain is real and your child  knows that they have to heal. But, that doesn’t stop your young athlete from wanting to play, practice and compete. What now?

You train hard for most of the year, work real hard on the field and end up in pretty good shape as a result. Then all of a sudden it’s the off-season and the urge to eat junk food whilst binge-watching  movies or television shows is strong, so you’ll need to work hard to stay in shape before the next season kicks off.

Being a soccer parent gives you magical powers to spot any other soccer parents within a 5k radius. Soccer parents are your community, they know what you’re going through and here’s how you find them.

It’s quite common for lifelong sports fanatics to suddenly question whether there’s any point in playing team sports anymore. Here are five reasons why you absolutely should keep at it.

Synopsis: Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers, but it’s also one of the most preventable. Sun safety is important, even when your child is about to score that winning touchdown. 

In the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 12 million children ages 2 through 19 years are considered obese. If you’re staring at that statistic and saying, “Wow! That seems like a lot,” – it is. Although the number of obese preschoolers (ages 2 through 5 years) has significantly decreased in the past few years, the rates for other age groups haven’t seen the same decline. The CDC notes that during 2011-2012, 8.4 percent of children ages 2- through 5-years were obese. In comparison, more than 17 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 were obese. That number inches up to 20.5 percent for the 12- through 19-year teenage grouping.