By BILL PENNINGTON
New York Times
One of the country’s most popular, fastest-growing girls’ sports is nearing a move that might seem obvious to outsiders but has instead engendered rigorous debate: offering players protective headgear.
While boys’ lacrosse players have been required to wear hard-shell helmets for years, in the girls’ game, which is played by vastly different rules that generally forbid contact, only goalies are obligated to wear helmets.
But with girls’ lacrosse players wielding reinforced sticks and firing 60-mph shots with a hard, unyielding ball, serious head injuries do occur. In a climate of heightened awareness about head trauma in athletics and with a substantial rate of concussions in girls’ lacrosse documented by recent studies, the push for some kind of headgear in the sport has gained traction.
There has, however, always been one intractable obstacle: There has never been a standardized, certified headgear designed for girls’ lacrosse and endorsed by the sport’s governing body, US Lacrosse.
That will soon change with new, regulated headgear set to appear in stores in several months. If sales take off, the headgear, which is approved by US Lacrosse, could alter the landscape of girls’ and women’s lacrosse forever.
Some of the sport’s longest-tenured coaches and officials worry that the headgear, though optional for now, will lead to more aggressive play and will ultimately ruin the nuanced spirit of the game, which has been played in North America for about a century.
“I do fear for the future,” said Erin Brown Millon, a former U.S. national team player and current coach who was the director of US Lacrosse’s women’s division for six years.
Millon is afraid that increased headgear use may set off a slippery slope of rougher play, which could eventually lead to arm, shoulder and chest padding — equipment already worn in boys’ lacrosse.
“When we get to that point,” said Millon, who is in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame, “the uniqueness and special nature of women’s lacrosse will be lost forever.”
Despite these concerns, the groundswell of support for some kind of head protection continues to build.
Last year, the Florida High School Athletic Association mandated the use of headgear during all girls’ lacrosse games and practices, even though there was no nationally approved headgear. Florida athletes mostly wear the modified headbands occasionally used in soccer.
Other states have taken notice.
An effort to require headgear in New York stalled four years ago. But the body that governs high school sports in the state expects to reconsider the move now that there is a girls-specific headgear standard approved by US Lacrosse and ASTM International, a widely recognized organization that develops and publishes standards for a range of products.
“Our girls’ lacrosse committee and our safety committee will have further discussions,” Todd Nelson, the assistant director of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, said Wednesday. “Additionally, we’ll have to decide: Do we want to mandate that all players wear the ASTM-approved headgear?”
Nelson said that at last summer’s national meeting of state high school association executives, officials from Michigan and Virginia also voiced concerns about the lack of protective headgear in girls’ lacrosse.
“We do anticipate that some policymakers will move to require it,” Ann Carpenetti, the vice president of lacrosse operations for US Lacrosse, said of the standardized optional headgear, which must cover the entire head but also be of a malleable material so it does not imperil players without headgear.
Exactly what the new girls’ lacrosse headgear will look like is a mystery that has left lacrosse coaches and administrators restless with anticipation. The major manufacturers of lacrosse equipment are not saying much, perhaps fearful of tipping their hands in a competitive market.
But at least one manufacturer, Cascade, has tested its product with focus groups and plans to have the headgear ready for consumers when the new headgear terminology of the National Federation of High Schools/US Lacrosse rule book goes into effect on Jan. 1. At that time, any headgear that players choose to wear must conform to the ASTM standard, which is packed with research and test-driven language but vague on aesthetics.
But the optional, soft-sided headgear permitted in past girls’ lacrosse games, like those currently in use in Florida, would not conform to the new standards.
At least two other manufacturers of lacrosse gear, STX and Team 22, the authorized licensee of Under Armour, said they were also developing new headgear for women’s lacrosse. An STX spokeswoman said the company’s headgear would be ready as soon as its lab and field testing were completed. Team 22 indicated that their headgear model was “not in the final stages.”
A spokeswoman for Brine, which has been selling lacrosse equipment since the 1920s, had no comment when asked about the opportunity to develop headgear under the new standard.
The marketplace could be highly lucrative, as there are nearly 300,000 female lacrosse players in the United States, and the number is expanding rapidly. The number of American high schools with girls’ lacrosse teams increased by more than 31 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to US Lacrosse.
But meeting the ASTM standard will be challenging. While the approved headgear cannot have a hard outer shell or sharp protruding parts, it is required to absorb the impact of a ball traveling 60 mph or a stick swung at 45 mph. The headgear, which must be flexible enough to pass what is called a deformation test, also has to be compatible with protective eyewear, one of the sport’s few required pieces of equipment.
Kevin Davis, chief executive of the Performance Sports Group, the holding company for Cascade, said his engineers were intrigued by an assignment that required a melding of the seemingly opposing dynamics of softness and hardness. The company has gone through multiple iterations of its headgear, especially after consulting with players.
Players who have not yet seen the new headgear are not sure how receptive they will be to it.
“I don’t think I will like it,” said Baylee Barker, a sophomore who plays for St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Bradenton, Florida. “The headbands they’re making us wear in Florida now give me headaches. And on the package they come in, it’s literally in writing that they don’t prevent concussions.
“So I don’t see how they’re helping.”
Other schools have embraced headgear in some form and found a reduction in head injuries. After seven players on the girls’ lacrosse team at the Bullis School in Maryland suffered concussions in 2011, the team put every player in a rugby-style helmet that covered each player’s entire head. Five seasons later, the number of concussions — many of them caused by stick-to-head contact — has dropped dramatically.
“It’s had an impact and parents appreciate it,” the Bullis coach, Kathleen Lloyd, said of the headgear. “It might be more about raising awareness about contacting the head. There is a visual reminder.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
