Over the last decade or so, a number of football programs — not necessarily just in our area — have lost numbers due to fear of concussions. Instead of losing a good portion of their latter lives because they bashed their bodies together, some people are staying away from the sport entirely.
However, several local programs are tackling the concussion issue, so to speak, by reducing the impact in preseason, as well as during in-week practices in the lead-up to their games.
First, Ayer Shirley is in the second year of using Guardian Caps on their helmets, and coach Phil Marchegiani says the use has helped cut down on concussion in the Panther program.
Second, Lunenburg has gone with an implanted microchip in the Blue Knights’ Riddell helmets, which measures three different levels of impact on every player, connected to a monitor on the sidelines.
The Guardian Cap is currently utilized by thousands of football programs at the high school and college level — UMass has used it in spring practice — and is said to reduce the impact by 33 percent. It is clipped on to any helmet via the face mask, as well as via Velcro.
In past years, Ayer Shirley has felt the impact of concussion during the preseason.
This year, though?
“We’ve dramatically reduced the number of concussions,” Marchegiani said, “and we had no concussions related to football in the preseason this year. It wasn’t uncommon for us to have a few each and every year.
“The Cap is just a tool to help reduce. It can’t eliminate. And you also have to be smart about how you practice in terms of the lengths of time, the types of drills, what you’re teaching, reducing your contact, and get that squared away.”
Marchegiani had first discovered the Guardian Cap from Jude Kelly, who currently coaches football at St. Paul’s in Bristol, Conn. The Falcons have used the Caps for four years.
“They have spring football, and they had a number of concussions,” Marchegiani explained. “Once he went to the Cap, it greatly minimized the risk.”
He also said that parents have told him that they are now seeing the Cap in action, and that their fears about their sons playing football are reduced.
That’s something that can help participation numbers across the board.
“If you’re looking for ways to improve participation, and safety can be a part of the game, then the Cap is one of those solutions to multiple concerns and problems,” he said.
At Lunenburg, the Riddell Impact Program sees microchips embedded into the helmet, and coaches wear a monitor on the sidelines that informs them if a player has taken a hit to the helmet.
“It monitors and measures three different levels of impact,” Blue Knights coach Steve Boone said Friday. “Your high level, your medium level, and your low level of impact. And it measures for every single player — and it measures where the hits are taken.”
The where is important, as it can tell the coach specific things before even watching the game film, i.e. if the player is ducking before impact, given where the impact on the helmet occurred.
And that can turn into a teachable moment.
“You can adjust his stance, work with him on tackling and everything else,” Boone said.
Should a player have a high level impact, the monitor will go off.
“It doesn’t say that he has a concussion, but it alerts you that he has taken a hit that could possibly do that, and you can take them out and check them,” he said.
After practices and games, that information is loaded into a database inside the school, and everything is tracked.
“I can tell you how many hits the kid has had over a week, his career, in a year,” Boone added.
In addition, Boone can plug in the team’s practice plan into the software and see which drills have a higher possibility of impact.
“You can then look at the drill, adjust the drill, or something like that to see if you can limit impact,” he said. “So from a coaching standpoint, you can now make sure that it’s as safe as can be.”
The superintendents of both districts — Dr. Mary Malone of Ayer Shirley and Dr. Kate Burnham of Lunenburg — were behind their coaches in implementing their methods.
“(Malone) was great in terms of supporting us for them,” Marchegiani said. “She jumped right on it right away and said if it’s all about player safety, we’re going to provide the means. The kids, when we first proposed it, there was a little bit of skepticism that lasted all of maybe one day. And then they knew this was non-negotiable, that this was where we were going to go to protect our kids, both now and in the future.
