By Ray Compton
According to testing and surveying by a research program at Virginia Tech University, parents, athletes and administrators at Hamilton Southeastern and Fishers can breathe a little easier in regards to equipment they supply their high school football teams.
The research shows that a huge percentage of helmets used by the Royals and Tigers are among the safest used in football.
The testing profile supplied by the School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences at Virginia Tech ranks football helmets from one to five stars. Five stars is considered the best available; four stars is ranked very good; three stars is considered good; two stars is called adequate; and one star is marginal. There is also a classification called not recommended.
According to the results, Fishers uses 84 helmets that carry a five-star ranking. The helmets are Riddell 360 and Riddell Revolution Speed models. The Tigers also employ 90 Riddell Revolution models that possess a four star ranking.
Meanwhile, Hamilton Southeastern uses 59 helmets (Xenith 2 and Riddell Revolution Speed) with five stars and 60 helmets (Xenith 1 and Riddell Revolution) with four star rankings.
WTHR has been one of many television stations in the United States that has reported the findings of Virginia Tech helmet researcher Dr. Stevan Duma. Television reports were filed in Arkansas, Georgia and Ohio this spring. WTHR aired its investigative report last week. The WTHR website carries the scores of central Indiana high schools, including results from high school and middle schools in the HSE district.
It was reported that Duma and his Virginia Tech team began testing helmets in 2003. WTHR said that some central Indiana schools are using helmets with one and two star ratings. WTHR said that those schools included teams in Indianapolis, Muncie, Greencastle, Noblesville and Anderson. One of the athletic directors told the Indianapolis station that he was unaware of the report.
Another school, Ben Davis, which uses mainly four star and five star ratings, has said it will shelve the non-recommended helmets.
“The faster that I can replace them, the better,” Ben Davis coach Mike Kirschner told WTHR reporter Bob Segall.
Duma agrees with the decision.
“Those are helmets I would not want my child wearing,” said the researcher. “Schools should stop using those helmets.”
The concern on player safety and concussion injuries has carried over into several statehouses. This week California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation that his state’s high school teams may only have contact (full equipment) practices twice a week during the season. Texas and other states have limited contact practices.
Formal high school practices have begun in Indiana.
