One of the reasons new rules have recently been established to limit contact for football is due to issues concerning concussions and head trauma.
While the California Interscholastic Federation is doing everything it can to protect student-athletes from head injuries there is still a problem with unreported concussions.
There are a variety of new products to assist coaches and athletic trainers in determining whether there has been a head injury right after suspicion one has occurred. Now, a new product using technology has come to California and not surprisingly a Bay Area high school was the first adapter.
After evaluating technology from Triax Technologies, San Rafael had players on its JV and varsity lacrosse and girls soccer teams outfitted with a Triax Smart Impact Monitor last spring. Beginning this fall the football team will wear the device.
On the Triax web site the device is described as: “a Bluetooth head impact monitoring solution to monitor the severity of all head impacts in sports.”
The device fits comfortably like a forehead band with the sensor in back. For football it goes under the player’s helmet.
The way the Triax device works is whoever monitors the system, usually the athletic trainer, instantly receives a text message saying which player it was and the linear and rotational forces of the blow. A certified athletic trainer has the authority to remove a player from the game, and can do so immediately. The information from the game is logged, so the trainer can go back and look at it should the player have concussion-type symptoms after the game.
According to Thomas Hollingsworth, the West Coast representative for the Connecticut-based company, Triax is new to California and San Rafael is the first high school on the West Coast to provide this to all their athletes in at-risk sports. The football program will have 80 players using the monitoring system.
Santa Barbara City College has 160 athletes wearing the device, UC Irvine is using it to accelerate research, and Triax is working also with Northwest soccer clubs and academies. Women’s World Cup star Abby Wambach has endorsed the product.
For the past few years the concussion issue has come up at all the CIF press conferences. The CIF also has a page regarding concussions on its web site, and is constantly working with the sports medicine community to address the issue of head trauma.
Besides UC Irvine, the University of Virginia and several other colleges and universities are doing concussion/head trauma research.
Plus, with technology moving as fast as it is, new products are coming to the marketplace all the time, including one for football where LED lights flash on the helmet based on the severity of the hit.
“The sports medicine community has been slow to endorse any individual products because they feel more research is needed on the effectiveness on these tools in measuring the velocity of hits, but I’m not discounting this product. Another set of eyes always helps,” CIF-State Commissioner Roger Blake said.
While measuring the velocity of a hit is important, it’s also important to realize something Blake re-affirmed the medical community has been telling us, and that’s any type of head trauma, even what might seem slight or insignificant, can be problematic.
“We can never make sports totally safe from head injury – and we all know the kids don’t want to tell when they take a hit,” Blake remarked. “What I like about these products is its advancing a heightened awareness about concussions.”
What Blake also wants people to know this device and any others on the market don’t prevent injuries, they provide information.
“The biggest key right now is people have to realize this type of device could be real good at helping kids, but it’s not a magic bullet.”
According to Hollingsworth, the Triax device is scheduled to be used for the San Rafael soccer, water polo and volleyball teams based on whether they can raise the funds.
