Vocal Strain Poses Long-Term Risks for Coaches. Anyone Have a Lozenge?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/sp...smtyp=cur&_r=0

No surprise that Buzz gets some attention. Wojo seems to have a good handle on this - doesn't sound overly hoarse during post game interviews. Guys on the trading pits (when there were actually trading pits manned by actual people) here in Chicago often got voice lessons to project louder while saving their voice.

Some college basketball coaches protect their voices with daily cups of tea. Others gargle with salt water in the morning and before games. Others stick with Life Savers and cough drops. Or at least they try.

“I don’t have the patience to suck on them,” Rhode Island Coach Dan Hurley said of his on-again, off-again relationship with throat lozenges. “I just crush them up in seconds.”

Buzz Williams received a warning in the form of a camera down his throat. Five years ago, when he was the coach at Marquette, Williams was in the midst of another grinding season when he received a letter from an alumna. She was a laryngologist and had heard him speaking. With such a raspy voice at 38, Williams was probably doing serious damage to it, she said.

She offered to give him a nasendoscopy, and when she switched on the monitor with the camera in his throat, she was quickly able to point out inflammation and other damage. Williams, who had been a coach for over 15 years, was finally forced to consider what his job was doing to his voice.

“It’s not just the games,” said Williams, now the coach at Virginia Tech. “It’s the daily abuse to your voice, in practices, film sessions and then games. It’s the totality of the toll of being a coach.”

Yelling and coaching go hand in hand. Coaches will raise their voices to make an impact, to get a point across, to berate a player or an official, or to be heard over a noisy crowd. College basketball coaches do more yelling than coaches in almost any other sport, and they do it whether the players are a few feet away or at the other end of the court.

“It sounds like you have a cold or strep throat or something,” Rhode Island’s Hurley said of his in-season voice. “You can’t talk because your voice is gone and it hurts even when you whisper. And you lose your voice really early in the practice calendar, in October, when you’re going really long and hard because you’re trying to set the tone for the season. I lose it the same time every year. You just get used to it.”

That, medical experts say, is the worst thing to do.

“You can do short-term damage and long-term damage,” said Dr. Michael Pitman, a laryngology system leader for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “When you’re screaming, that trauma becomes really intense. So the vocal cords start to swell and inflame.

“Usually, it’s just a temporary thing that goes away. But sometimes, as the vocal cords try to repair themselves — and you strain and push your voice even harder — that’s where you get into a vicious cycle of vocal decompensation. The more you try and compensate, the more damage you do.”

The vocal cords of an average man vibrate 110 to 115 times per second; the rate is nearly 200 times per second for the average woman, whose pitch is higher. When someone yells, it increases the collision forces between the vocal folds, resulting in greater trauma to the tissue.

With the college basketball season now spanning six months and lasting more than 30 games for most teams, the vocal cords of coaches are being taxed more than ever. That means many coaches are doing permanent damage to themselves over the course of their careers. And it is why many have come up with their own remedies.

Rick Pitino of Louisville has been using a microphone connected to the public-address system during practices since 2001, his first year at the university. Pitino had experienced vocal cord pain during his first 20 years as a head coach.

Dan McHale, in his first season at Eastern Kentucky, uses wild-cherry lozenges daily. “About 30 during practices and 15 during games,” he said.

Jimmy Patsos, the coach at Siena, used nothing but cough drops until he had a conversation several years ago with a Broadway singer who told him that they were the worst remedies for hoarseness.

“Lozenges just numb your throat,” said Patsos, who now uses Life Savers.

Williams, who moved to Virginia Tech last year, takes a spoonful of honey before each game and another at halftime. In case of vocal emergencies, one of his assistants keeps a bottle handy on the bench.

Hurley drinks chamomile tea during the off-season to get his throat ready. Once practices begin, he makes sure to drink green tea daily.

The Cincinnati women’s coach, Jamelle Elliott, has lost her voice by mid-October every season since she became a head coach in 2009. That never happened to her during the decade she spent as an assistant at Connecticut, she said.

"When I wake up, I just hope, ‘O.K., I hope this is the day that my voice is back,’ ” a hoarse Elliott said Friday. “And when my voice does come back, it’s like, ‘Yes, this feels good!’ It’s hearing what I usually sound like.”

In general, coaches know they are doing damage to themselves but do not see many alternatives to prevent it. The pressure to perform often leads coaches to yell at players. But there is rarely a moment during a game when a coach can use a normal conversational voice.

Even during timeouts, coaches have to shout at players inches in front of them to be heard over fans, thumping arena music, bands and public-address announcers. Practices can be quieter, but they are often where the real damage is done.

“Practices are exhausting on your vocal cords,” said Seth Greenberg, a head coach for 22 seasons and now a lead analyst for ESPN. “You’re constantly teaching.”

Greenberg knows the toll that yelling takes. Twice during his career — at Long Beach State and at Virginia Tech — he had surgery to remove polyps in his throat. But as soon as he felt good enough to go back to his routine, he did.

College basketball coaches, particularly at programs in power conferences, have year-round jobs. There is seemingly constant meeting and greeting — and talking. During days off, most coaches try not to speak to anyone, but that is almost impossible.

Pitman, the doctor at Mount Sinai, recommended that coaches enroll in vocal training or see a doctor for a short appointment to learn better voice projection techniques.

After Williams’s reality check at the laryngologist’s office five years ago, he learned how to yell from his diaphragm instead of his throat.

“At times, I try to do right,” he said. “But you get in the heat of the moment, and I’m not thinking about ‘Oh, this is how to properly yell.’ "

By BRENDAN PRUNTY - NYT's - NOV. 21, 2015