Most athletes remember the big hit. Fewer remember the forty small ones that came before it in the same month, or the scrimmage that ran long the week before a tournament. A season tally is a simple running count of contact days, and it keeps those smaller events on paper where they can be seen.
This is educational writing, not a diagnosis. A tally cannot tell you what is wrong with your body. What it can do is show patterns that are easy to miss during a busy season, and it gives anyone who examines you a clearer timeline to work from.
What counts as a contact day
Start by deciding what goes in the count and writing that rule at the top of the page. A contact day might be any practice with live tackling, any game, any scrimmage, or any session where you were struck, fell hard, or collided with a teammate, a surface, or equipment. Keep the definition the same from week to week so the numbers mean something when you compare them.
Next to each date, write the type of session in a few words: practice, game, conditioning, or weight room. Then add one line about intensity in plain terms, such as 'full contact,' 'walkthrough only,' or 'shoulder pads, no live hitting.' You are not scoring anything. You are recording what your body was asked to absorb.
Keeping the count honest
The easiest mistake is to log only the sessions you remember as bad. Go back through your calendar, your coach's schedule, or team messages once a week and fill in the gaps. If you were pulled from a drill early or sat out part of a scrimmage, write that down too, because a partial session still counts toward the load.
Use the same units every time. Pick either number of sessions or total minutes of contact and stick with it. Mixing a session count in one month with a minute count in the next makes the record hard to read later, and that is the point where a tally stops helping.
Breaks belong in the record too. A week off, a bye, or an illness that kept you out of practice should be marked as zero contact days, not left blank. A blank can mean you forgot, while a zero shows you were away on purpose. Over a full season, these marked gaps often explain why the total dropped and then climbed again.
Reading the running total
Once a week, look at the total for the past seven days and for the season so far. Note whether the week was heavier than usual, lighter than usual, or about the same. Then add a single line about how you felt in the days that followed, using plain words like 'stiff,' 'fine,' 'sore in one spot,' or 'sleeping poorly.' Keep these notes separate from the count so you can see whether certain weeks line up with changes in how you feel.
A spike in contact days is not proof that anything went wrong. Tournaments, make-up games, and preseason camps all produce spikes. The value of the tally is that a spike is visible and dated, so when a new ache shows up, you can check the calendar instead of trying to rebuild two months from memory.
Keep the file somewhere you can reach on your phone and also in print. A notebook works as well as a spreadsheet. The best format is the one you will keep updated every week, so choose the simplest one you can sustain.
Bringing the tally to a visit
If you decide to get examined in the St. Louis metro, bring a printed or handwritten copy of the tally with the last several weeks marked. Put the date of any significant hit at the top, then list the contact days that followed it. This gives the person examining you a clear sequence instead of a vague sense that you have been busy.
If you have sudden weakness, numbness, confusion, trouble with vision or balance, a severe headache, or any symptom that feels like an emergency, do not wait to write it down. Get emergency care first, and add the details to the record afterward.
The tally is not a substitute for a professional exam. It is a dated record that makes an exam more useful, and it costs nothing but a few minutes each week.