Athletes Could Receive Million-Dollar Treatment

State law requires that kids have insurance if they want to play high school sports.

In reality, though, many don’t. Some simply can’t afford it. And in the greater Los Angeles area, many school districts do not provide sports accident insurance and athletic trainers are not commonplace.

What to do?

A novel program in the South Bay may provide the answer--and a model for a bill working its way through the California Legislature. A hearing is scheduled today in a Senate committee.

Called “Team to Win,” the program, launched in 1994, serves about 24 schools and 12,000 students. It provides each athlete with $1 million in sports-related insurance. It also provides for an athletic trainer at each school, for injury clinics and medical supplies. And it sends doctors to high school football games.

The program also emphasizes the importance of good grades. At the program’s annual dinner last month, held in conjunction with a Dodger game, award winners were introduced with brief descriptions of their athletic exploits and announcements of their grade-point averages. The higher the grade point, the louder the whoops from the crowd.

“This means a lot because it gives the athletes recognition,” said Coesen Ngwun, 18, of Torrance High, the football team’s most valuable player and a 3.37 student bound for Harvard in the fall. “We’re not just athletes. We’re scholar-athletes.”

Added Kim Gipson, 17, a basketball player and 3.6 student at Westchester High who will attend USC: “Just recently I had a knee injury. . . . This program was great. And being recognized for your grades means just a little more than being recognized just for athletics, don’t you think?

“Anyone can play a sport. But not everyone can balance athletics with academics.”

All this sound too good to be true? There’s more. The cost to kids? Zero. How much does the school pay? Nothing.

The cost of the program, about $800,000 annually, is underwritten by Centinela Hospital, various corporate sponsors and a nonprofit organization, the West Coast Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine Research Foundation.

“It’s been shown over and over again that high school students who participate in sports demonstrate better attendance, better grades, are more likely to graduate, are less likely to participate in gangs or use drugs, and overall are more likely to attend college and become leaders in the future,” said Keith Feder, a Manhattan Beach orthopedic surgeon who founded “Team to Win” with athletic trainer Jill Sleight.

Feder, who served U.S. Olympic athletes at the Atlanta Games in 1996 and in Sydney last year, continued: “In order for kids to continue to participate in sports, it’s imperative that they receive the best medical care available. We’re not just looking at a high school athlete returning to sports sooner. We’re looking at a high school athlete with a catastrophic injury returning to normal life. And that can only happen with proper medical care.”

The bill, AB 760, would authorize pilot projects around the state in which grants would be awarded to nonprofit groups on a dollar-for-dollar match.

It would provide $1-million insurance policies for student-athletes as well as athletic trainers, a student athletic trainer mentoring program and a yearly scholarship program.

The issue in Sacramento is finding money in a tight budget to fund it, said former Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who has been active in promoting the bill.

“It’s a tough year for funding,” Katz said.

Nonetheless, he said, “We’re optimistic,” in part because so many in Sacramento seem surprised to learn that current law requires only a $5,000 policy. AB 760 would enable the state to take the South Bay concept around California without having to expend more political capital--at least right now--in revamping the law.

“If you’re injured in basketball, baseball, football, soccer, whatever, $5,000 will probably get you a couple of Tylenols and an Ace bandage,” Katz said. “It’s nothing. And that’s all the law requires.” He called it a “fiction” that creates a “disparity between people with money and people without money.”