Science is late to the football safety party, but it’s making up for lost time.
It wasn’t until after the turn of the century that a direct correlation between repeated head contact in football and brain impairment was found and started to get publicized. Now, it’s widely known that chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative disease of the brain, is a potential outcome for anybody who straps on a football helmet to compete.
There are some out there in academia trying to learn as much as possible about head contact in order to make the sport safer. One of them is Nathan Murata, the dean of the University of Hawaii’s College of Education. Another is Erik Swartz, a professor at UMass-Lowell.
Together and with the help of many others, including the GOG Foundation, they are about to begin a three-year study in Hawaii.
It entails the outfitting of special helmets for players from Saint Louis and Pac-Five, two teams that agreed to be part of the study.
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“In July (when Hawaii high school football practice officially beings), they’re going to get brand-new Riddell SpeedFlex helmets with what’s called InSite (an impact monitoring system), which tracks head impact at practices and games,” Murata said. “Someone at the site will be monitoring how much impact these kids will have on a daily basis and player profiles will be developed.”
Sensors inside the helmet transmit head-impact data to a computer or other device to staff on the sidelines. Aside from the long-term usefulness of the information gained, coaches and trainers will be alerted of a hit that exceeds a safe threshold and can respond immediately.
“We’re doing this so informed decisions can be made,” said Murata, who also helped to start the Hawaii Concussion and Management Program in 2010. “This could lead to improved coaching techniques and reduced head contact. Slowly but surely, we will be gaining positive momentum and change. We’ve got a ways to go, but we’re moving in the right direction.”
According to Murata and Swartz, it’s possible that other Hawaii schools, including public institutions, may join in the study after the first year.
This Hawaii study comes on the heels of studies done at the college and high school level in New Hampshire that Swartz was a part of when he was at the University of New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire, Swartz said, about 50 players at UNH for two years and about 115 players at four high schools for four years were part of that study.
“In Hawaii, the entire teams (Saint Louis and Pac-Five) will be involved,” Swartz said. “We want to really be able to ensure that this kind of thing is feasible on a team-wide, program-wide basis and beyond.”
Starting in the second year, players will be divided into a test group and a control group, with the test group receiving Hutt 808 (or helmetless tackling training) intervention. That’s when players will learn techniques on how to tackle and make contact without using their heads while getting used to the feeling of doing it without a helmet on so they will, it is hoped, be less inclined to use their heads when they put their helmets on during practices and games.
“The first year, we will get a baseline and then there should be a decrease in head impacts throughout the second year,” Swartz said. “The third year gives us an opportunity to make adjustments.
“The goal is to incorporate whatever is the best way to go about teaching players how to tackle and make contact. We will find out exactly what is working to make the amount of contact decrease. That’s why it’s so important to test it. There are still a lot of different ways people are teaching out there where you should place the head going into contact. There’s still a lot of guesswork. We do know examples of how you shouldn’t do it — like when you used to be taught to put your helmet through someone’s ear hole or through someone’s chest at the numbers. We want to find out not only the right form or technique, but how often people need to practice it. We are not naive and thinking that we will eliminate all head impacts.”
In the New Hampshire study, the intervention group had 30 percent fewer head impacts than the control group by a season’s end, according to published results in the Journal of Athletic Training.
The GOG Foundation, which was set up in memory of the late Gary O. Galiher, a Hawaii attorney and UH alumnus who died in a 2016 helicopter crash, is providing all of the funding for the study via a grant to UH and UMass-Lowell. Galiher, who was perhaps best known for his work helping mesothelioma victims, was also passionate about advocating for those suffering from CTE.
One of Galiher’s clients was Hawaii resident John Wilbur, who played for the Washington Redskins. He died of CTE, according to Linda Monica of the GOG Foundation.
“Gary knew how devastating these injuries are and worked to bring awareness to the people of Hawaii how dangerous this was, and to hopefully make it safer,” Monica said.
In 2015 and ’16, Galiher sponsored a “Neural Huddle” conference in Hawaii, an educational forum on the subject of CTE that brought together medical professionals from around the country.
“One of the speakers was Erik Swartz, and Gary was very impressed with what Erik was doing and thought, ‘Gee, I wonder if we can bring this to Hawaii?’ ” Monica said. “Unfortunately, he died before it could happen, but the foundation has continued his efforts and reached out to Erik.”
