A lawsuit filed in federal court by retirees from the National Football League has brought deserved attention to the risk of concussions in the game. At the local level, the alert on its severity has been sounded by the recent harrowing incident involving Damien Memorial School senior athlete Alan Mohika. Serious consideration of further guidelines is needed, not just in regard to safety effectiveness of equipment but also to the rules of the game itself.

Mohika, a 17-year-old Damien quarterback and defensive back, suffered his second concussion in a year last Friday. Indeed, once a person suffers a concussion, he or she is as much as four times more likely to sustain another one.

Mohika’s second concussion was caused by a defense safety while Mohika was throwing a touchdown pass.

Mohika lost consciousness and was put on life support while suffering from a brain hemorrhage — more than just a concussion, his doctor pointed out.

Nearly 200 concussions felled students on the high school gridiron in the 2010-2011 school year.

Nationally, at least 50 high school or younger football players have been killed or sustained serious head injuries on the field since 1997, according to research by The .

While Damien is a private school, state Department of Education officials adhere to a concussion-management program for all of the state’s 43 public high schools. That’s an admirable, solid first step.

As part of the program, coaches are required to take a free, annual concussion course. Also, in adherence to national prep standards, any athlete who has endured a concussion in the past shall be removed from play upon showing any signs or symptoms of a subsequent concussion.

The NFL retirees maintain that a 1979 league penalty against a player for butting, spearing or ramming an opponent with the top of a helmet "fell far short of the important safety and injury prevention action that should have been taken."

The suit also criticizes the NFL for failing to join college and high school football in complying with a standard written in 1973 by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.

However, that standard has been called into question because it is a volunteer consortium that is largely comprised and financed by the helmet makers themselves.

Still, skull fractures in football essentially have disappeared since the standard was adopted.

Head trauma, though, continues to occur much too often in youth sports, for both boys and girls. School administrator and athletic directors need to reassess the rules of sports engagement to see if tighter rules on high-risk physical contact can, and should, be applied.

Meanwhile, experts and industry data indicate that more than 100,000 children nationally wear helmets too old to adequately protect them and as many as a half million others wear potentially unsafe helmets requiring critical examination.

Most parents are not about to disallow their children from playing competitive contact sports.

"They love it," mother Nohea Mohika said of Alan and his brothers. "My boys are athletes."

That love of sports can indeed bring a host of terrifically positive experiences — but ultimately, participation must be made as safe as possible for our young athletes.