It isn’t just in the high-impact sports of football and girls’ soccer where Hawaii’s high school athletes can suffer concussions, officials have come to learn.

“We’ve had one in air riflery and some in canoe paddling,” said Nathan Murata, of the Hawaii Concussion Awareness Management Program.

“One student was hit by a falling target and others have been hit by paddles,” said Murata, who is a professor and graduate chair in the University of Hawaii’s Department of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Services.

That HCAMP’s education and testing extend beyond what are normally considered “contact” and “collision” sports helps give Hawaii one of the most well-rounded concussion programs in the nation, officials say. Diana Coyne of the Connecticut-based Parents Concussion Coalition, which surveys national trends, said she is not aware of another state where mandatory baseline testing and education for high school athletes and coaches is as inclusive or well underwritten as Hawaii.

“That’s why we are so appreciative of the Legislature understanding this,” said Murata. “They realize the importance. Here is something where Hawaii can be in the forefront. We’re glad the concussion program is getting the kind of attention that it rightfully deserves.”

Last year, for the first time, the Legislature appropriated $420,000, and Senate Bill 720, which is working its way through the current legislative session, aims to keep it that way by providing continued funding for concussion education and monitoring.

Ross Oshiro of The Queen’s Medical Center for Sports Medicine has said, “We’re the first state that actually attached funding to do cognitive testing on our student-athletes.”

Last year’s measure, Act 262, extended the program into its seventh year, where it “has successfully impacted the lives of over 150,000 student-athletes in Hawaii by ensuring all high school coaches are concussion-certified and our student-athletes are protected by baseline testing,” Chris Chun, executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, wrote in testimony to the Legislature.

Baseline testing averages about 10,000 athletes per year, Murata said, with tests conducted in students’ ninth- and 11th-grade years.

“We’re trying to be very much proactive and trying to (incorporate) a lot of preventative measures,” Murata said. “Hopefully, it continues to gain traction. I think it is a matter of sustaining momentum.”

HCAMP, which has involved the Department of Education, Department of Health’s trauma support staff, Queen’s, UH and athletic trainers, is available to every high school, public and private, statewide. Last year education was extended to middle school programs.

For football, where much of the high school focus has been nationally, a 2016 study for the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation listed Hawaii among the top four of the 50 states for compliance with National Federation of State High School Associations concussion safety guidelines. Massachusetts, Nebraska and Vermont were the others.

Officials said an average of about 1,000 high school athletes here suffer concussions.

With education, “We can identify concussions earlier, we can treat them earlier and we can get them on the road to recovery so they don’t repeat,” Oshiro said.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.