Once again, the 91��ɫ English professor is bridging the arts-sports divide as poet-in-residence. Sponsored by Canada Athletes Now (CAN) and other benefactors, she will make poetry of the games and the Olympians – two poems a day, published online.

You could call Uppal an old hand at this. Since CAN embedded her with the Canadian athletes at the 2010 Vancouver Winter and Paralympic Games (see YFile), she has also versified the Arctic Games and the 2011 Rogers Cup in women’s tennis at 91��ɫ (see ). It was her idea from the start, a novel way for this jogging sports fan and acclaimed poet and novelist to cross-pollinate two usually disparate worlds – arts and sports.

Priscila Uppal reads poetry at CAN Fund Athlete House in Vancouver 2010

She has immortalized speed skaters and lugers, hockey teams and skiers. Now she’s going to do the same for swimmers and divers, rowers and runners. It will be the first time she has ever attended the Summer Olympic Games and, for that matter, the Summer Paralympics, which she is also covering poetically. London will be a different experience for her than Vancouver. In London the venues are far apart, not centralized, so she’s going to travel by tube to take in events, but not hang out as much with competitors.

Every day, she will post one poem on the CAN website and one on the website. She will read her poems to athletes and – for something entirely different – to spectators watching events on giant screens in London’s Hyde Park. “My backpack will be filled with poems I can distribute. It’ll be fun. Most people will be in a good mood, not rushing to work. It’s a perfect situation for flash poetry or mob-style poetry.”

Like the athletes competing, Uppal has been in training. She’s boned up on all the sports and created an enormous binder full of rules and vocabulary associated with each one. It will help stimulate her poetry-writing muscle so that she can perform every day and be ready for the unexpected – like the luger who died on a practice run at Whistler. Some poems will blaze with glory, others will fall flat, she says. “It’s all part of the process.”

As she has done in the past, Uppal will also be writing about books, film and visual art featuring summer sport for the Literary Review of Canada in her Poet's Corner blog. She’s going to start with a piece about a book written by French literary critic Roland Barthes asking what is sport and why do humans participate in it. Look for meditations on The Bone Cage, a novel by Angie Abdou about a swimmer; Will Ferrell’s comedies and why sports are funny; Haruki Murakami’s writing about running; and Murderball, a documentary about paraplegic rugby players.

Next spring, Uppal will publish a collection her poems in Summer Sport: Poems,  the companion volume to her Winter Sport: Poems published by in 2011.

Here are the first lines of a poem Uppal wrote at the request of the British Embassy one year before the Summer Olympic Games were to kick off:

London Calling

Is it just me, or have you noticed
the growing legion of rowers along the Thames,
singles and doubles, fours and eights,
cutting up waves on the way to Trafalgar Square,
where, it is rumored, gymnasts tumble from one embassy
to the next, balancing on beams, vaulting off
to trampoline up to Big Ben to set the clock

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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"These guys played a really difficult role, but things change and people leave the game," said Paul Dennis, a 91��ɫ sports psychologist and former staffer with the Maple Leafs. "We've got to support them the way they once supported us.

"We talk a lot about resilience after losing a game, every coach telling you to get right back up the next day after a loss. But we need to employ social resilience, too.

"The culture of sport, the brave face, is great. But sometimes that culture keeps a lot of things inside. That has to change. I'm not condemning people for not getting involved with these players. When Wade played, he was very open in his optimism, but it goes to prove we all have demons. We don't know what those demons are if they're not telling us. But I think the time has come to bring these stresses to light.

"A young man is gone, but hopefully there is a silver lining, something to be learned that can help other players," said Dennis. "Hopefully, more players can come forward and tell us what is troubling them and we won't put this issue on the back burner any longer. There is nothing more valuable than life itself."

Dennis travelled many miles with Belak during the latter's seven years as a Leaf. "He would pick up everyone's spirits," Dennis recalled. "Players would just gravitate to him. He never got to contribute a lot in the course of a game, but he was a guy who always saw the big picture, who never considered himself exceptional because he was a Leaf. He made us feel inadequate because he was so optimistic. This is just devastating."

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The federation is making the change – which affects players between the ages of 6 and 21 – in an effort to create a safer environment for new players to develop skills. The rule change affects house league and select players in most of the province, though Ottawa and Thunder Bay aren't governed by the OHF.

91��ɫ health professor Alison Macpherson, who was among the first researchers to call for bodychecking to be disallowed in recreational hockey, called it a great first step. "I know some parents keep their kids out of hockey, especially out of competitive hockey, because they worry about the injuries that might ensue when kids are allowed to bodycheck," she said Thursday.

Until now parents who wanted their child to play non-contact hockey didn’t have many options, said Macpherson. “There is pretty good scientific evidence that bodychecking, especially under the bantam level (age 13-14), leads to injury in youth ice hockey,” she said.

A study published last year found kids who were bodychecked were about 2.45 times more likely to suffer an injury than kids who didn’t play with body contact and 1.7 times more likely to suffer a concussion, she said. “Kids are more likely to play if they think they’re not going to get hurt,” said Macpherson. “Which is great because we have an obesity epidemic.”

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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I'm not exaggerating when I describe this muscle strain - or whatever it is - as life-changing. Not life-changing like, say, your first child or the new cafeteria here at work. No, it has changed my daily life, my routine, my mood, my body - and none of them for the better.

My weight is up. My motivation is down. So is my energy level. My craving for all the worst junk foods, usually suppressed by vigorous exercise, has intensified as I've worked out less and less.

“Here are two parts of your life that have been disrupted,” says Frances Flint, professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science in the Faculty of Health, coordinator of athletic training at 91��ɫ and a sports psychology consultant. “That good feeling” from the workout itself is gone, she says, along with the “my time” that I had carefully built into my week. "Time away from work, phones, e-mails and other stresses".

So true. That simple joy of moving, of washing away the day's aggravation in a shower of sweat, has given way to longer sessions in front of my TV. Gone as well is the camaraderie of long runs on Saturdays with my marathon training group.

"That injury is now defining your day, your social life, your release of stress, your feeling of joy," Flint says.

. . .

In the meantime, what do I do? I figured out the most important part on my own: getting my enlarged posterior back in the gym. Flint says it's crucial to continue working out. Any kind of exercise is good, but since I'm a runner, I want to find ways to maintain cardiovascular fitness.

If I were a collegiate track athlete, she says, coaches would have me run in a pool to achieve the value of exercise with little or no impact on the body. I don't have easy access to a pool, so I've been riding a stationary bicycle, which doesn't hurt much but is excruciatingly boring, even with an iPod and a ballgame on. I've also hit the treadmill despite my injury, running slowly for as long as I can. And I've been stretching a lot more, hoping I can work out the problem myself.

It's important, Flint says, to do this at the same time of day that I used to work out. Overall, the effort will give me "the same biochemical effects" as my previous regimen, Talbott says, without stressing the injured area.

The other critical move, Flint says, is to take control of the situation. Find out as much as you can about the injury and possible therapies. Become actively involved in your care, instead of a passive recipient of treatment. Banish "negative self-talk." Some athletes like to visualize the affected area healing; they believe it speeds the process.

"I want to know as much as I can about my body," Flint says. "What is the damaged tissue? Why has this occurred?"

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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You signed your kids up for organized sport in hopes of keeping them active. But there's more to keeping kids in the game than buying gear and driving them to practices.

. . .

There's no doubt that parental support and encouragement keep kids in sport, but there's a line between support and pressure that parents should avoid crossing.

That line isn't well defined, but a 91��ɫ University study of athletes who dropped out of a sport and those who stayed in offered a surprising picture of when parents should push and when they should back off.

According to lead researcher Jessica Fraser-Thomas, all the athletes in the study considered dropping out of sport. Those who did noted that their parents forced them to continue even as their interest waned. Whereas the children who chose to stay in sport, did so after exploring their options with their parents. Allowing your child the freedom to take an occasional practice off or to adjust their training schedule while still encouraging them to remain active seems to be a winning formula.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The era of sports specialization at a young age is upon us, despite alarm bells sounded by medical professionals who say we are putting young athletes at risk of burnout and overuse injuries at ever younger ages. Their young bodies rebel.

. . .

The irony in the sports specialization trend, according to Joe Baker, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science in the Faculty of Health, is that there’s simply no evidence to suggest specialization at a young age improves an athlete’s chance of success, wrote the Vancouver Sun Oct. 16. In fact, the evidence is that the majority of successful athletes come from what he calls a “sampling background,” meaning they have played a variety of sports.

Baker said he’s talked to elite coaches around the world who have told him that athletes who don’t have exposure to a variety of sports and unstructured play lack fundamentals.

“They are good at performing motor skills associated with their sport, but they can’t creatively experience or creatively demonstrate something novel.”

Indeed, research suggests that playing a sport in an unstructured way improves one’s chances of excelling at it later on. A German study comparing soccer players who were involved exclusively in structured training to those involved in unstructured play found the latter group to be more creative on the field.

“If you look at hockey players and the types of training they do when they are really young, they play a lot of structured hockey. But if you look at the bulk of their time, it’s road hockey, it’s pond hockey, it’s pickup scrimmage games with the neighbourhood kids,” Baker said.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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, a collection of over 50 poems, will launch Tuesday, October 19, at 7:30 pm, at The Boat, 158 Augusta Ave. in Toronto’s Kensington Market. It is also the 10th anniversary launch party for Mansfield Press. All royalties from the sale of Uppal's book will go to help support athletes through , which helped fund about 80 per cent of the athletes at the Games.

The book contains haikus and other poems about the Olympic athletes and their beloved sports – whether curling, skeleton, skiing or hockey – and includes some poems Uppal wrote when she took in the Arctic Games, in between the Olympics and the Paralympics. It’s being hailed as a mingling of physical and verbal acrobatics and a dazzling competition of risky play, inventive movements and daring heights.

Left: Priscila Uppal embracing the Olympic torch as the Canadian Athletes Now Fund poet-in-residence. Photo by Chistopher Doda

“So much about poetry is having surprising language and using it in unique ways,” says (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04).  Watching Olympic athletes compete and marvelling over the strange terms attached to each sport – what Uppal calls athletic language full of metaphors and symbols – gave her plenty of inspiration.

She says the poems are accessible and amusing, and were also fun to write. Winter Sport: Poems would be of interest to sports lovers, Olympics lovers, poetry lovers, ���Ի���English and physical education teachers, as well as young reluctant readers, she says. CBC Radio featured many of her poems over the course of the Games after fans called in requesting more, as did CAN Fund and the athletes themselves.

"While some people were skeptical about elite athletes responding to poetry," Uppal admits, "the Olympians ended up being one of my most welcoming audiences ever. Every day they asked for more copies of poems and looked forward to the performances. The summer Olympians have encouraged me to take up my post in 2012 in London to write the companion volume, Summer Sport: Poems."

Right: Priscila Uppal dons her own team shirt while watching speedskating at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Photo by Chistopher Doda

Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander and Ashland, says “From one of Canada’s most dynamic poets come sports poems that are playful, funny, and full of trick moves. Uppal’s wordplay is as muscular as the athletes she celebrates.”

In addition to Uppal’s new book, the evening will launch Imagining Toronto by Amy Lavender Harris, a 91��ɫ geography faculty member in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies; Goodbye, Ukulele by Leigh Nash (BA Hons. ’04), a former student of Uppal’s; At the Gates of the Theme Park by Peter Norman; and Stray Dog Embassy by Natasha Nuhanovic.

Left: Priscila Uppal has a Canadian moment. Photo by Chistopher Doda

Uppal's books include which , (which was shortlisted for the $50,000 Griffin Poetry Prize), and , and of the novels and . She is the editor of ���Ի��� and the author of .

For more information or to order the book, visit the or websites.

To read a few of Uppal’s sports poems, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The study, recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience, examined the inner workings of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), located towards the top and back of the skull. It acts as the brain’s game card for hand-eye coordination, playing a critical role in planning visually guided actions.

Above: Professor Doug Crawford performs computer-controlled tests to measure the accuracy of Pat Byrne's gaze and reach. Byrne, a postdoctoral Fellow working in 91��ɫ's Centre for Vision Research, is hooked up to eye-tracking headgear.

“Football is a good example to illustrate our results. A quarterback trying to deke out the opposition would actually use separate parts of the posterior parietal cortex in rapid succession...to achieve this,” says principal investigator Doug Crawford, professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and Canada Research Chair in Visuomotor Neuroscience.

The findings suggest that within the PPC, the superior parietal occipital cortex (SPOC) specializes in encoding reach goals. “In the case of trying to fake a pass, SPOC would help you pick the real player you want to throw the ball to,” says Crawford. “The midposterior intraparietal sulcus (mIPS), would help you to look at the decoy player. Then the angular gyrus (AG) would compare your current hand position to the goal you’re aiming for in order to guide your throw."

Simply put, SPOC picks the goal, while mIPS and AG are involved more closely in planning the motor functions for both our view and our reach.

Scientists at 91��ɫ’s Centre for Vision Research (CVR) used a non-invasive procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to create activity in these three areas of the brain. TMS delivers mild, split-second electromagnetic pulses, with little to no side effects for participants.

Participants then performed computer-controlled tests to measure the accuracy of their view and reach, while hooked up to eye-tracking headgear. Both left and right hands were tested, as well as reaching with and without visual feedback. By observing differences between subjects tested both with and without TMS over different brain areas, Crawford and his colleagues were able to map the unique responsibilities of each area.

“Because mIPS and AG are involved in calculating both hand and eye movement, and SPOC is dedicated to encoding the reach goal, the whole assembly is likely important for hand-eye coordination,” says Crawford.

“It’s also a good reason to wear a helmet. You wouldn’t want a hard knock on the parietal cortex,” he says.

The study’s lead investigator was kinesiology PhD student Michael Vesia, currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Sunnybrook Research Institute Brain Sciences Research Program at the University of Waterloo. It was co-authored by CVR colleagues Steven Prime, a psychology PhD student, Xiaogang Yan, research associate, and Lauren Sergio, a kinesiology professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health.

The research was funded by the .

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Right: Alyn McCauley

Many of McCauley’s concussions occurred when he was a junior player, before he played a single NHL game, including one that sidelined him for about half of the 1998-1999 season as an up-and-coming hockey star – he won the Canadian Hockey League player of the year award in 1996-1997. He went on to play with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings, but concussion issues continued to plague him and affect his contributions on the ice.

The Blow by Blow: Sport Concussion Management symposium will run tomorrow from 6:30 to 8:30pm in the Tribute Communities Recital Hall, in the Accolade East Building on 91��ɫ's Keele campus.

The symposium is in memory of (left), a former 91��ɫ student who died from an injury sustained from a concussion during a hockey game last year. Donald fell during a fight, hit his head and went into a coma until he died a few weeks later. The Donald Sanderson Memorial Trust Fund has donated funds toward the symposium and the School of Kinesiology & Health Science’s annual student awards to help share important knowledge about concussion management. Dahna Sanderson, Donald’s mother, will deliver the opening remarks at the symposium.

Among the speakers is Professor Jason Mihalik (right) of the Department of Exercise & Sport Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose primary interest involves the study of sport-related neurotraumatic injuries, with a particular emphasis on youth head and neck injury biomechanics. Mihalik will talk about recognizing and managing trauma. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Athletic Therapists Association and is a member of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. He also serves on the editorial board for Athletic Training & Sports Health Care and is the research director for the J. Pat Evans Research Foundation.

Alison MacPherson (left) of 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science, who has a long-standing interest in childhood injury research, will discuss the epidemiology of sports-related concussions – incidence, risk factors and prevention. In Ontario, over 6,000 youth and children were seen in emergency departments for a sport-related concussion between 2002 and 2005. Concussions were most common among 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds playing hockey, followed by bicycling, skiing/snowboarding and football.

MacPherson has been involved with research related to childhood injuries in general, and bicycle-related and sport-related injuries specifically. She is the co-principal investigator of the -funded study on child and youth injury prevention. She was the first recipient of the Faculty of Health Early Career Research Award and has served as a reviewer and author for the World Health Organization report on child injury prevention. She is also a member of the ’s Board of Directors and ’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Also speaking at the symposium is Dr. Paul Piccininni (right), a sports medicine staff member at 91��ɫ and team dentist for the Mississauga St. Michaels Majors of the Ontario Hockey League. He will give an update on mouthguards. He has worked at the last nine Summer and Winter Olympic Games, including Vancouver 2010, and has coordinated medical services for world championships, including basketball and ice hockey. He is a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation Medical Committee and the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission (Games Group), president of the International Society for Dentistry, Sport & Trauma, and is a Fellow of the Academy for Sports Dentistry.

The symposium costs $20 per person and is free for youth under 17 and all 91��ɫ students with ID. The location is fully accessible. Light refreshments will be served. Parking is free to registered participants in the Student Services Parking Garage.

To register online, click . For registration information, contact Rumina Habib, registration and convocation assistant in the Division of Continuing Education, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, at ext. 44617 or dce@yorku.ca.

For additional information about the event, contact Cindy Hughes, head athletic therapist/manager of the Sport Injury Clinic at the School of Kinesiology & Health Science, at ext. 77232 or chughes@yorku.ca.

The conference was covered in the Toronto Star's section Aug. 31.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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A new study led by 91��ɫ researchers finds that young athletes with Type 1 diabetes may experience a marked decrease in performance as a result of their blood sugar levels.

Above: The 91��ɫ study found that sport skill performance for young atheletes with Type 1 diabetes was highest when blood glucose levels were in the normal glycemic range.

The study, published in the , reports that participants’ athletic prowess was sapped by low blood glucose, a condition known as hypoglycemia. Their cognitive abilities also declined as a result.

“Physical activity itself is unfortunately one of the factors that can cause this dip in blood sugar to occur,” says lead researcher Michael Riddell, associate professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science, Faculty of Health.

“Parents tend to get quite concerned about this, understandably so,” says Riddell (left), who was diagnosed with the disease at age 14 and regularly engages in competitive sports. “They wonder, ‘should I have my child enrolled in sports at all? Is vigorous activity safe?’ Our results show that those with diabetes can compete on equal ground, provided they learn to manage their condition.”

The study is the first to examine these interactions in a real-life setting. Researchers outfitted participants with 24-7 glucose monitors during a week-long diabetes sports camp at 91��ɫ, testing their skills in tennis, basketball or soccer at various times during the day and recording blood sugar levels. Participants, who ranged in age from 6 to 17, were even monitored as they slept using this new technology. Data for the study was recorded during last summer’s camp; it will run again this year starting July 19.

Researchers found that sport skill performance was highest when blood glucose values were in a “normal” glycemic range. During hyperglycemia – or elevated blood sugar – results were only slightly reduced. This occurred nearly universally across all participants, however results suggest the degree to which one’s sport performance deteriorates depends on the individual.

“Some subjects showed only minor reductions in performance with hypoglycemia while others showed much greater impairment,” Riddell says. “This could be related to the level of blood glucose concentration, the rate at which glucose drops, and the individual’s capacity to maintain focus in the face of all these factors.”

Regular exercise is known to be beneficial for people with diabetes, but can make glycemic control challenging. This balance is even more difficult to achieve in adolescents, as insulin requirements are influenced by fluctuating nutritional intake, physical activity levels, and the rhythms of other anti-insulin hormones. Adding to the confusion is that the symptoms of low or high blood glucose are often masked by exercise, because they’re so similar: increased heart rate, sweating, shakiness, fatigue and dehydration.

“Any obvious issues with performance – poor passing, failed free throws and serves – that are really out of the ordinary should be a warning sign to check blood glucose levels and add carbohydrates,” Riddell says. The best way to boost blood sugar levels is to consume about 15-30 grams of a fast-acting carbohydrate, such as dextrose tablets, juice or a sports drink. “These are rapidly absorbed and immediately replenish the very small reserve of glucose normally found in the blood stream,” he says.

Incidents of moderate to severe hypoglycemia were common on the evenings following sports camp participation. However, researchers found no evidence that a bout of nocturnal hypoglycemia influences sport skill performance the following day. Cognitive testing also showed that participants’ reading ability was lower during episodes of hypoglycemia, as was the ability to distinguish and name colours.

Riddell notes the importance of conducting this type of field research, as opposed to lab-based studies. “Actually playing a sport involves different cognitive processing, reaction time and motor skill performance,” he says.

The paper, “Blood glucose levels and performance in a sports camp for adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus: A field study” is co-authored by Dylan Kelly, a McMaster University undergraduate student under Riddell’s supervision, and Dr. Jill Hamilton, pediatric endocrinologist, The , University of Toronto.

The research was supported by the (NSERC), Medtronic Canada and Can-Am Care.

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer, with photos courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin..

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