By Marin Murray.
The football team recently began using Guardian Caps every day during their contact practices in an effort to reduce head injuries and the effects they have on athletes.
“There’s not a lot of research out of how they help with concussions right now,” football athletic trainer Billy Abbe said. “But we’re going to do everything we can to help as many kids as we can in our program to keep them safe throughout practices.”
Created in 2010, Guardian Caps were designed to reduce the impact of collisions to the head by 33%. They are now the leading soft-shell helmet cover in the United States and are being used to advance the need for better head protection for football players.
“I think it will help a lot,” senior Timothy Outlaw said. “It’ll help a lot, especially with hits on heads because we have a lot of helmet-to-helmet contact during practice from Monday through Thursday.”
Many college and professional football teams utilize these helmet covers in their own practices and have seen many benefits. The NFL, National Football League, recently mandated the use of the Guardian Caps for all training camps this year. Despite this, the caps have not been used widely among high school teams.
“We’re one of the first ones in the area to do this,” Abbe said. “Coach Fullen is very big on taking as much care of our kids as we can.”
As of right now, the team’s offensive linemen, defensive linemen, linebackers, running backs, and safeties are the only positions that have access to the Guardians, as they are the players that experience the most collisions during practice.
“We bought as many as we could afford,” Abbe said. “Hopefully every year we buy a little bit more, and hopefully when it’s all said and done all of our kids will be using them.”
Concussions are the most common injury among high school football players, with over 40,000 occurring each year. This doesn’t even take into consideration the number of concussions that happen at the college or professional level. But even with this large number of athletes experiencing concussions, they continue to impact each person in a distinct way.
“Concussions affect everyone differently,” Abbe said. “One day you could be completely normal and then go back to having headaches the next day. So, we just have to take each case day by day and do the best we can with every kid because they’re all different. And once you have one, it’s kind of like anything else, you’re more susceptible to having more.”
CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has played an important role in shining the light on the long-lasting effects of severe head injuries, like concussions. That, coupled with newer technology and a better understanding of the brain, have brought the topic of concussion safety to center stage, especially when it comes to football.
“There is starting to be more of an emphasis on it,” Abbe explained. “I think it’s going to be important in the long run, and we’ll see that our kids’ health will be a lot better too.”
Abbe hopes that by the team implementing the use of the Guardian Caps that they will not only keep the athletes safer but bring awareness to the importance of concussions and their effects at the same time.
“I think that we do a pretty good job of trying to be proactive about taking care of our athletes and do a better job than some,” Abbe said. “I think that’s one of the main things I like about the school. If it’s for the kids, then we try to help and do it the best that we can.”
