The future of football is here. The Riddell InSite Impact Response System – the latest in head impact monitoring technology from the world’s leading helmet manufacturer — is currently being used by more than 25 colleges and hundreds of high school football programs across the United States, and thanks to an initiative by Christus Hospital – St. Elizabeth and St. Mary, has made its way to Golden Triangle gridirons.
Thanks to partnerships with Christus, Lamar University and about 10 high school football programs across Southeast Texas have received the helmets, one of the first being Port Neches-Groves. Other high schools included Nederland, Orangefield and Hardin-Jefferson.
“The Christus Health Foundation – Southeast Texas raised the money to purchase the helmet sensors (sensors only, no helmets) and then Christus provided them to the teams,” said Danielle Pardue, marketing and communications manager for Christus.
PN-G athletic trainer Ricardo Serna said the players, coaches and trainers have all bought into the idea of using the The Riddell InSite Impact Response System, which takes a high-tech approach to monitoring players for head injuries by utilizing sensor technology that alerts sideline staff immediately when a player experiences significant impact during a game or practice.
“Everything is positive. There are absolutely no drawbacks at all,” Serna said of the system. “Now you have more eyes on the field. The machine is doing more for you. If I am watching a player over here that gets hit and somebody gets blocked over there and I don’t see it, (the system) will alert me that something happened over there.”
InSite was developed based on Riddell’s Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS) and Sideline Response System (SRS), a technology that has analyzed more than 2 million impacts since 2003. This new technology fits into the liner of a Riddell Revolution Speed helmet and utilizes integrated technology to monitor and alert the sideline to head impacts sustained during a football game or practice.
The InSite sensors measure head impact on five distinct locations within the helmet, and the system can be customized to measure thresholds by player position (quarterback, running back, offensive line, defensive back, linebacker, defensive line, special teams, wide receiver) as well as by level of play, including youth, high school, college and professional. The device calculates the linear and rotational acceleration, duration and location of each impact, and identifies over-exposure from single as well as multiple impacts.
The system won an Edison Award, one of the highest accolades a company can receive in the name of innovation and business, beating out award entries from others in the head protection industry to win Gold in the Applied Technology-Protective Systems category in June.
It’s not a concussion proof helmet, however, warned Kimberly Pitts, Christus’ program director for concussions.
“There are sensors embedded inside the helmet in a little cushion that they can pump up,” Pitts said. “They are in certain areas along the helmet — one on the right temple, left temple, and up above. It takes the forces from the cushion onto the sensors that transmit a signal at certain thresholds. Depending on the thresholds of concussive forces that is where the sensor (indicates) a significant impact.
“It alerts the trainer on a hand-held device that looks like a GPS unit. He or she has it set on usually vibrate, and it will vibrate. They pick up the handset and it tells you which player and it gives you a pictorial representation of that player with a helmet and will tell you what side (of the helmet) that the injury occurred on. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every time it is a concussive type impact, but it is a significant impact that makes you want to take that athlete out of play and take a look at them. Not every impact results in a concussion. But at this point, you need to investigate the little impacts that we thought were harmless because that is what builds up over time. Hopefully, what this does is takes the little impacts and puts them all together, so you can say this athlete has had a lot of disturbances.”
“InSite is not a diagnostic tool and does not replace the need for medical personnel,” added Erin Griffin, director of corporate communications Riddell & BRG Sports. “It’s additional information to alert medical personnel and coaches when a player may have experienced significant impact that could put them at greater risk of injury.”
Repeated head injuries being linked to permanent brain injury came to light in 2011 with federal NFL concussion litigation. Riddell felt the impact of this litigation with more than 75 NFL players alleging Riddell concealed data about dangers of concussions. In 2013, following the death of Rhett Ridolf, a Colorado high school football player, the company lost a lawsuit that found Riddell liable to the tune of $3.1 million on failing to warn Ridolf about the dangers of concussions, according to media reports.
But concussions are not just a football problem, Pitts said. It affects athletes in all sports, soccer being one of the most impacted. Even cheerleading sees it fair share of concussions, according to Pitts.
That being said, there is really nothing than can prevent concussions in any sport including football, Pitts said. It is a harsh reality of being an athlete.
“There is that group of parents that balk at the idea of kids playing football at all … but what I have noticed and what has helped is that with parents who don’t mind their kids playing and want their kids to play, when there’s an injury if you can give them objective data, they are absolutely receptive to that and want to follow the progression of the athlete. They are not just apt to taking the physician’s word that they are injured; they have objective data.”
But there are tools available that can help coaches, trainers, and medical personnel identify players that have concussion-like symptoms, and Riddell responded to the negative press it received in the past by launching its InSite Impact Response System in October 2013. The system has proved not only to be a tool of the future for football, but a good business decision for both Riddell and its customers, said Griffin.
“We saw thousands of players utilizing InSite this past season,” she said. “We’re very encouraged by the positive reception that InSite has received. There is interest not only at the youth and high school level, but we also see … college programs at varying levels of competition utilizing InSite too. That type of investment across levels of play really exemplifies the … value (of InSite), and the type of technology assisting with their football program and injury management.”
Each Riddell InSite sensor runs about $150 per player, Griffin said.
“There are a couple of ways you can deploy InSite for your team,” she said. “If you have a Speed helmet inventory already, which means you are a high school and you have Riddell Revolution Speed Helmets, you can actually have InSite added to those helmets. You can have InSite added during the annual reconditioning process if you already have Speed Helmets, and the third way is you can actually purchase a brand new Speed Helmet with InSite in it. We launched the product compatible with the Riddell Speed Helmet.”
The system is also available in Riddell’s new SpeedFlex Helmet, which runs around $395, Griffin said.
The InSite System is not only a useful tool for trainers. It also allows players all over Southeast Texas to rest assured that sideline staff are monitoring them when they feel that extra-hard hit.
“I personally like the helmet,” said PN-G varsity strong safety Logan Lejeune. “It is a little more snug. I feel all around safer with it, and my parents really like that I have it. Defense is head to head, and knowing how bad a concussion can be, it’s just a lot safer having the sidelines know if something happens.”
Pitts has led the Christus initiative to bring tools like Sway Balance and other concussion testing mobile device applications that can be accessed by sideline staff to Southeast Texas high school football programs. Now there is even an app that players can use to assess their own injuries.
“The kids have an app called Huddle. Every game is digitized, and they can actually watch themselves, zoom in on their own area of play and see where the action was and how they got hurt, and they are able to bring that to me. Now I am using the Huddle application to show the parent, ‘Hey, this is most likely where the injury happened,’” Pitts said.
The Riddell InSite Impact Response System is just another tool that can help coaches decide when a player should come out of the game, and allows them to assess data that can help determine whether or not they are ready to return.
“The more student athletes we use this on, the more information we are going to gather and the better we are going to get with the utilization of the sensors,” Pitts said.
More than 10 years of research has gone into the development and design of InSite, Griffin said, pointing out that calling it “the future of football” doesn’t necessarily do the system justice.
“We feel strongly that helmet sensors will become standard in football helmets within the next five years,” she said. “We like to say it’s not the future of football; it’s the now of football.”
Source: http://theexaminer.com/stories/news/future-now-football-helmet-sensors
