Zackery Lystedt was thirteen years old when he took a hit to the head in a middle school football game in Washington in 2006. He went to the sideline, came out for a few plays, told his coach he felt fine, and went back in. He collapsed at the end of the game.

Three months in a coma followed, and years of relearning how to walk and talk came after that.

His name is now the name of the law. Washington passed the Zackery Lystedt law in 2009, the first state concussion law in the country.

Every other state followed within eight years. Whatever your state calls it, you are coaching under some version of it right now.

What the law actually requires

The Lystedt law does three things, and every state’s version does some form of the same three. Parents and athletes sign a concussion information sheet once a year before the season starts. Any athlete suspected of a concussion comes out of the game the moment it’s suspected.

That athlete does not go back in until a licensed healthcare provider trained in concussion management evaluates them and signs off in writing.

Not a coach’s judgment call. Not a parent’s judgment call. A healthcare provider’s, in writing, after the symptoms have cleared.

The part that’s actually your job

CDC’s HEADS UP guidance breaks a coach’s job into three steps, and none of them involve diagnosing anything. Remove the athlete from play the moment you see a sign or hear a symptom. Check for the danger signs that mean call 911: worsening headache, repeated vomiting, slurred speech, one pupil bigger than the other, a seizure, can’t be woken up.

If none of those are present, the athlete still sits, and still needs a healthcare provider before any return.

You are not the one deciding whether it’s “just a ding” or something worse. The rule already decided that for you. Any symptom means out, full stop.

That’s the part I didn’t understand for years. I thought the hard job was reading how serious the hit looked. It isn’t.

The hard job is having the discipline to apply the rule the same way every time, whether the score is tied or the kid is begging you to let them finish the inning.

When it’s your own kid

The instinct runs backward with your own kid. You want them to be fine so badly that you talk yourself into believing the symptom they’re describing isn’t really a symptom.

Headache from the sun. Dizzy because they skipped lunch.

You coach yourself into the diagnosis you want.

The rule exists to close exactly that trap. You don’t get to be the parent doing the medical read on your own son or daughter in the middle of a game you’re also coaching.

The symptom checklist doesn’t care whose kid it is. Neither should you, in that moment.

When it’s someone else’s kid

Pull another family’s kid and you’re making the call in front of parents who are watching you do it. Some of them want their kid back in for the same reason you’d want yours in. The written protocol protects you right there.

You’re not making a judgment call about their kid. The rule applies to every kid on the field, including your own, and you can say that out loud to the parent standing at the fence.

Document it while it’s fresh: time of the hit, what the athlete said, what you saw, who else witnessed it. Not because you expect a fight. Because the record protects the kid’s medical team as much as it protects you.

Before the first practice

Know your league’s protocol before you need it, not during the moment you need it. Know which healthcare provider your league designates, or which one your athlete’s family already sees. Keep the signed information sheet on file.

Most of that takes fifteen minutes in August and saves you from making a decision under pressure that the rule already made for you in June.

Zackery Lystedt is in his thirties now. He still lives with the effects of that game. The law with his name on it exists because a coach in 2006 didn’t have a rule telling him the decision wasn’t his to make.

You do.