LANSING - On June 30th of 2013, the state of Michigan enacted a law regulating sports concussions and return to athletic activity. This law was amended in October 2017 via public act 137 of 2017. The change now requires athletes under the age of seventeen who are not enrolled in college to take online training once every three years in order to better detect signs of sports related concussions.

Lynn Sutfin, Public Information Officer for the Michigan Department of Health specifies that "What it does right now is it requires anybody who is involved with youth sports whether you're a coach, a volunteer manager, a referee, anything that when you are involved with these sports, that you take the training once every three years. It's an online training and then it obviously provides you with information about concussions, scenarios, and then just how these things should be handled and why you should do these things, obviously to protect your youth athletes. It's a good idea to A, get a refresher, and B, as well as get the training again to make sure that you have the most up-to-date information."

Not only does the recent change increase the required frequency of online training, it also updates the meaning of the term Youth Athlete. Sutfin adds that "One of the changes was that it amends the definition of youth athlete. This excludes seventeen year olds who might be enrolled fully in a college, or university, or other institution of higher education. Because I guess there were some issues applying a seventeen year old who was in college, so this now excludes those if you are playing at a college sport obviously these rules do not apply to you, and obviously they have their own set of how to handle these things."