Before every sports season, parents all across the countries are asked to sign forms holding the sports program in which their child will be participating harmless and releasing the program from liability should he be injured. No ifs ands or buts.  The parent or guardian of a child using a program or town’s facilities must sign a waiver.  Such forms are typical for all camp programs; sports clinics and sporting events organized by independent groups, such as the baseball, soccer and football organizations using town fields.

When I was asked to sign such forms back when my sons were playing sports, I remember asking their father, a practicing attorney; “Is this truly a binding legal document? What would happen if one of our boys suffered a catastrophic accident as a direct result of the town or school’s negligence and needed medical care for the rest of his life?”

In essence, the forms say that even if the town allows your child to play on unsafe fields or use poorly maintained or unsafe equipment – say, for instance, a soccer goal that isn't properly anchored – and he is injured or killed when the goal falls on top of him, you agree not to sue the town. While the waivers thus insulate program organizers and municipalities from lawsuits if a child gets injured except where in instances of gross negligence, one wonders whether they do so at the expense of protecting children against preventable injuries.

Even though my sons are no longer playing organized sports in the town where they grew up, I remain committed to making youth sports safer, both at the national level in my daytime job for MomsTeam and, in the evening, in my own community, where I recently raised the question of whether liability waivers are binding and enforceable.

The situation that has sparked my concern was a new athletic complex built in my town less than 100 feet from a high-traffic highway (i.e. one with over 50,000 vehicle trips per day). I was concerned because I knew that there was mounting epidemiological evidence establishing a link between vehicular air pollution and adverse effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular health of children. I was concerned because doctors say that the toxins inhaled by children while playing sports – specifically the fine and ultra-fine particulate pollution in car and truck exhaust fumes – are especially dangerous. I was worried that children playing on those fields were being unnecessarily put at risk of severe asthmatic attacks and, in rare cases, sudden cardiac death. I wondered whether liability waiver forms would insulate the town from a lawsuit if, god forbid, a child playing on one of the new fields were to suffer an asthma attack and die.

To get an answer to my question, I called the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association (MIIA), a non-profit organization incorporated by the Massachusetts Municipal Association in 1982 to provide insurance services to cities, towns and other governmental entities in Massachusetts. I was told that municipalities are protected from lawsuits if a guardian has signed a liability waiver under a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, which limits or eliminates the liability of government entities, even in cases of negligence.

I asked one of the account representatives for the town of Concord if she was aware of the potential liability associated with the new athletic complex. She told me that pollution is everywhere and explained that the town was immune from injury claims. I asked her if the town would be immune if a severely asthmatic child from another town who had not signed a waiver suffered a fatal asthmatic attack while playing on one of the new fields. Suddenly, the account representative was no longer interested in speaking with me.

The account representative’s response – or in this case, lack of response - begs my next question: was the town paying higher insurance premiums to cover the risk associated with building fields so close to a highway? And, if the answer was no, I wondered if the town was protected and ready for any potential liability stemming from such increased risk.

Last week I read an article in the Fort Myers News-Press  about a case before the Florida Supreme Court which has put into question the legality of youth sports liability waivers and has some worried that youth sports in the state could be in jeopardy because insurance costs would go up without such waivers. Others say such a ruling would make sports safer because it would increase the program’s incentive to maintain safe fields.

I will continue to follow the case and hope that readers from around the country will weigh in on the issue. I am particularly interested in how your community handles the safety of children of children playing sports on town fields. Does it force people to sign a waiver stating that they will not sue if something goes wrong? Is your community proactive when it comes to sports safety by implementing a risk management program which can help keep insurance premiums under control?

Note to reader: I wrote this blog on February 25, 2014 and updated it to include new information and updates one year later February 25, 2015 about a new "helmet add-on paper.

Last week, we posted to the site a group of four articles about a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Neurosurgery showing that football helmet design affected concussion risk among a large group (or what scientists call a "cohort") of college football players.

Because the study's findings matched almost exactly the estimated difference in concussion risk in the STAR helmet ratings, a test developed by the co-lead authors of the study, Virginia Tech-Wake Forest's Stefan Duma and Steven Rowson, which is designed to measure the effectiveness of football helmets in reducing the forces that cause concussion, we also updated an existing article about those ratings to include a reference to the new study.

Just before those articles were published, we received a press release from the American Academy of Neurology about an abstract of a research paper on football helmets slated for presentation to the AAN Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in late April 2014.  The press release said that, using crash test dummies, researchers in Florida had found that football helmets do "very little" to protect kids against the rotational forces that cause concussion, and quoted the co-lead author, Dr. Frank Conidi, director of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology and Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology at Florida State University College of Medicine, as saying that the study dispelled the assumption of "generations of football and other sports participants" that their brains are protected by their investment" in football helmets.

While numerous newspapers and reporters - with at least one notable exception (see below) - elected to take the research paper largely at face value in publishing stories (links to which then popped up repeatedly in our Twitter feed and were dutifully retweeted), MomsTEAM took a pass, which led many to wonder, on Twitter and via email, why?

For a number of reasons.

First, as many of you know, MomsTEAM has been covering the concussion beat for 14 years, longer than anyone in the mainstream media.  Since I and my staff, especially Senior Health and Safety Editor Lindsey Barton Straus, began writing about concusssions in general, and fooball helmets in particular, back in 2000, we have tried to live up to our reputation as the "trusted source" for youth sports safety information by making sure that anything we publish has been properly vetted and is based on methodologically sound scientific research.

As a result, we have become skeptics, critics and curators of credible information on the subject.  In a now very crowded space of concussion activists, bloggers, and a largely uneducated media, we continue to see our mission of keeping all sports active kids safe by separating fact and fiction, and making sure what we publish, while it may not be the first to discuss a particular development, is the most comprehensive and objective.

Second, all we had to report on was an abstract of a research paper.  With so many researchers vying for limited funding dollars and attention, the trend these days seems to be a game of jumping the gun, sending out press releases about abstracts of papers before they have appeared, if they ever do, in peer-reviewed journal papers.  While MomsTEAM occasionally reports on research papers, we are careful to point out that they have not been subject to scrutiny by the scientific community. 

In this particular instance, when Lindsey and I dug deeper, our investigation raised in our minds serious concerns that reporting on this particular research paper at this preliminary stage might give it more credence than perhaps - emphasis on the word, "perhaps" - it deserved. Without even talking to anyone with expertise in the subject, we were concerned about reporting on the paper knowing absolutely nothing about the methodology the researchers employed, especially when it involved an unspecified modification to the NOCSAE drop tests, purportedly to capture data about rotational forces.

Capturing data on rotational forces, much less setting helmet standards or designing helmets that reduce such forces, has been a monumental challenge for biomechanical engineers and helmet manufacturers for decades. We have been critical of NOCSAE in the past for its failure to test football helmets for their ability to reduce rotational acceleration (although, as we also recently reported, the organization says it will be announcing a new helmet standard at its next meeting in June which will for the first time include a standard on rotational acceleration).* Our original and updated article about the Virginia Tech STAR ratings also includes criticism by NOCSAE that it did not capture data on rotational acceleration (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!). As a result, we needed to be extra cautious in publicizing a paper employing a new methodology.

Third, that the research paper being publicized by AAN was commissioned by BRAINS, Inc., a Florida research and development company employing a co-author, Dr. John Lloyd, also raised a red flag. As we noted in our article about the new Virginia Tech-Wake Forest helmet study - which compared concussion data on an older model of Riddell helmet (the VSR4) versus a newer Riddell model (the Revolution) -  a similar conflict of interest led many in the concussion research community to discount a 2006 study reporting a difference in concussion risk between the Riddell Revolution and other helmets, peer-review notwithstanding, because it was funded by, you guessed it, Riddell.

Fourth, when we did ask respected researchers in the field to comment on the Condini-Lloyd paper, while they declined to comment on the record for MomsTEAM, we can say that they were not at all impressed by what little could be gleaned from the press release, one characterizing it, off the record, as "a train wreck."

And lastly, fifth, we weren't at all clear what the take-home message of the paper is. 

If the point of the paper is to say that current helmets don't protect very well against concussion, and, because they don't, the emphasis needs to be on coaches teaching proper tackling technique, players strengthening their neck and shoulder muscles, and officials more strictly enforcing the rules against helmet-to-helmet contact, then there was nothing new to report to MomsTEAM readers, as the fact that helmets are not designed to protect against concussions in the first place, and that proper tackling, neck strengthening, and rules enforcement are seen as more effective ways to reduce concussion risk, are positions we have been taking for years, and are part of Pillar Two of the Six Pillar approach to concussion risk management we outlined in our PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team."

On the other hand, if the point of the paper was to emphasize the point that football helmets should be tested on how well they attenuate rotational forces, which are the principal cause of concussions, and that new testing standards are needed, there was, once again, nothing new on which to report. There is already a well-formed consensus about the need for new standards, a subject on which MomsTEAM and I have reported for years. 

The bottom line is that, after considering all these factors, MomsTEAM decided not to run a stand-alone article, but to direct our readers instead to our existing, continually updated, content on football helmets and concussion risk reduction, including the following:

Virginia Tech Football Helmet Ratings: Helpful But Come With Limitations

Proper Tackling Reduces Risk of Catastrophic Injury Says Ex-Pro

Seven Ways To Reduce Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury In Sports

The Six Pillars of Concussion Risk Management: The MomsTEAM Approach

Making Sure Football Helmet Fits: A Simple, But Effective Way To Minimize Concussion Risk?

Still looking for an article about the Condini-Lloyd study that got it about right? Check out this article by Melissa Healy, one of our favorite sports health and safety reporters, which does a terrific job of at least presenting the major issues the research paper raises, albeit not in the depth that MomsTEAM does. 

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 UPDATE: A year later, we are waiting for the results of the Condini-Lloyd to be published in a peer-reviewed medical or biomechanical journal.  In the meantime, Dr. Loyd has come out with a new research paper, this one slated for presentation to the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in April 2015, in which he concludes, apparently using the same drop test methodology as in his previous paper, that a number of helmet add-ons, including Guardian Cap, do not, according to his research, reduce the risk of concussion. Once again, a slew of news outlets have uncritically published the press release, and it is has been dutifully publicized in the Twittersphere.

But for pretty much the same reasons MomsTEAM elected not to publish an article about the new study, we have again chosen to take a pass on posting an article about Dr. Lloyd's research paper based on the AAN press release because, without knowing the details, we would essentially be "buying a pig in a poke."  

Nevertheless, in the interest of getting both sides of the story, here's what Guardian Cap had to say about Dr. Lloyd's new research paper:

Dr. Lloyd's study is concerning to Guardian Caps, a company who has devoted the past four years to providing athletes with a superior energy management solution. Guardian has been tested extensively at Oregon Ballistic Labs, Wayne State University, Veritas and at several Universities. Our test data is available for review upon request. Guardian is currently being used by over 35,000 players from youth through D1 College levels. Guardian has several concerns with the findings that Dr. Lloyd reports:

• Dr. Lloyd reported that three different add-on products "reduced linear accelerations by about 11 percent, but only reduced angular accelerations by 2 percent." This conclusion does not detail individual findings, but just averages all three products. Because he did not report individual findings, Guardian Caps may have, in fact, tested much higher than other products. Unlike the other products tested, Guardian Caps are decoupled from the helmet, further reducing rotational and angular accelerations.
• The article does not disclose that Dr. Lloyd is an inventor and is working on his own football helmet that uses non-Newtonian Fluids (starch and water mixture). In a previously published article, Dr. Lloyd states that his helmet reduces concussions up to 50%.
• A drop test is not a statistically significant way to measure rotational/angular accelerations. This test should be conducted on a linear impactor testing setup. Furthermore, researchers have yet to conclude on two other main factors that affect the end data: 1) which multi-axial accelerometer data acquisition system collects the most statistically significant data and 2) the proper mounting placement and method so as not to affect the significance of the data. Dr. Lloyd's failure to account for these key nuances in testing essentially invalidates any and all yielded data. 

The bottom line: caveat emptor.  

*Update: True to its word, NOCSAE did announce a proposed football helmet standard at its July 2014 meeting. For my blog about that meeting and the new helmet standard, click here.  

Brooke de Lench is Executive Director of the non-profit MomsTEAM Institute, Founder and Publisher of MomsTEAM.com, and Producer/Director/Creator of the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer."  You can reach her via email (delench@momsteam.com) and follow her on Twitter @brookedelench.

Last week was chock full of news on the youth sports safety front. Nocsae decertified two men's lacrosse helmets, and I fielded some troubling emails about child sports safety advocates who allegedly spend their time monitoring social media, especially Twitter, for reports of youth sports injuries to take to plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers.

But, speaking of lawsuits, the big sports safety news of the week - at least in the media's eyes - was the filing of a class action in Illinois state court claiming that the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) was negligent in failing to institute what the 52-page Complaint contends are best practices in educating parents and athletes about the dangers of sport-related concussions and repetitive head trauma, and in the identification and management of head injuries by high schools in the state.

I had a chance to read the complaint today and while I agree with many of the goals of the lawsuit (MomsTeam has been a consistent and vocal advocate for having a certified athletic trainer at every high school, for instance), I will leave the job of deconstructing the plaintiff's Complaint to Donald Collins, one of our longtime experts (for Don's thought provoking article on the lawsuit, click here) I do want, however, to comment more generally on whether litigation is the best means to the end of keeping kids safe playing contact and collision sports.

If the IHSA class action lawsuit makes one thing clear for those of us, including many of the incredibly dedicated health care professionals and educators on MomsTEAM Institute's Board of Advisors, BODs, staff and expert panel, who spend our days working to protect children in sports through education, advocacy and research (something I have been doing for the past 15 years at MomsTEAM, and for a quarter century, if I count my time working to improve sports safety as an activist ), it is that we need to redouble our efforts to accomplish change pro-actively through adoption of best health and safety practices in every community, at every level of sport, in this country.

Finger pointing 

Instead of pointing fingers and laying blame at the doorstep of any particular group or organization by filing lawsuits - which, by their very nature, are adversarial and based on conflict resolution (although they certainly have their place as a vehicle for change, as Don Collins also recognizes in his piece on the Illinois class action) - I believe the better approach is to involve all those with a stake in making sports safer, from parents and athletes to coaches and administrators, from equipment manufacturers to school boards, municipal and town recreation departments, in a collaborative, cooperative effort to make sports safer for our children. 

This is the approach we are taking in our SmartTeams^TM program. Instead of emphasizing what hasn't been done to make sports safer (as the for-profit mass media, plaintiffs personal injury lawyers and their hired experts make their living doing), we choose to celebrate and highlight programs which are pro-active, applauding them for what they have done and are doing to make sports safer.

Instead of seeing the sports safety glass as half empty, we choose to see it is as half full.  

Instead of attacking football for what hasn't been done to make it safe (in some cases, because it is such attacks which boost their notoriety and thus generate donations for their non-profits), we have tried, not just with the release of our PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer," but in all the years before and since, to highlight all the ways in which the safety of athletes has been improved.  (In doing so, of course, we are in no way excusing those who have acted in a grossly negligent manner so as to cause actual injury to individual athletes. The remedy for those athletes and their families still lies in individual - or, in the case of former NFL players, class - tort actions for damages).  Indeed, it is building a grass roots movement based on this model that is at the very heart of our SmartTeams^TM program.

Good news

As the acknowledged pioneer in youth sports concussion education, and as the trusted source for objective, well-researched youths sports safety information, literally for the entire span of the 21st century, we at MomsTEAM have been privileged to witness and report on remarkable and positive changes in sports concussion safety, from increased awareness on the part of parents, athletes, and coaches about the dangers of concussions and repetitive head impacts (RHI), from an exponential increase in our understanding of the effect of concussions and RHI on the developing brain which have resulted in a growing movement to set limits on the number of full-contact football practices, from Pop Warner to the NFL, to research showing the important role neck strengthening may play in reducing concussion risk, from the use of baseline and post-concussion neurocognitive, balance, and visual testing to gauge an athlete's readiness to return to play to the use of sensors to improve the chronically low rate at which concussions are identified on the sports sideline.

With few exceptions, long gone, thankfully, are the days when athletes were routinely allowed to return to competition the same day if their concussion symptoms cleared in a few minutes after injury (thereby exposing them to increased risk of delayed recovery, permanent brain damage, and even catastrophic injury or death).  

No longer is the seriousness of the injury measured using a cookie-cutter approach which arbitrarily assigned a "grade" to the concussion depending on whether an athlete lost consciousness (which research has long since showed is not a marker for a more serious concussion and, in any event, is only present 5 to 10% of the time).  

The same kind of rigid approach to return to play, which depended on the number and grade of previous concussions, has been replaced by an individualized return to play protocol requiring an athlete to not only be asymptomatic, to be off all academic accommodations, and to return to baseline on neurocognitive, balance, and vision tests, but to successfully complete an exercise program of gradually increased intensity without concussion symptoms.

Separated by the letter V 

Do we have a lot of work yet to do? Absolutely. Is there a role for litigation in making sports safer? Certainly, just as there is a role for legislation, as was accomplished in the space of four years with the enactment of concussion safety laws in nearly every state. 

But I continue to believe the best way to make sports safer is not by filing class action lawsuits, spending my time scouring the Internet for media reports of catastrophic injuries so I can shine a spotlight on all that is supposedly wrong about youth sports safety in this country,or to feed to the personal injury lawyer bar to generate expert witness or consulting fees, but through education and grass-roots activism in which all stakeholders work together and are on the same team, not as plaintiffs and defendants, and not as litigation adversaries separated on a case caption by the letter "v." 

For three days over Memorial Day weekend, it was my honor and sincere pleasure to be the keynote speaker and a guest observer and consultant at the 2009 National Annual General Meeting of the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) in Dallas, Texas. The majority of the more than 700 folks in attendance were regional commissioners-the true backbone of the AYSO. The AYSO has long been at the top of my list of best national youth sports organizations. They have the right values, mission statement and an amazing number of dedicated volunteers and staff.

One of the highlights of the NAGM was the Friday night cowboy cookout. I am in the photo (above) with two regional commisioners. During dinner we were introduced to AYSO's newest Hall Of Fame inductees, Burton Haimes and Cherie Tucker, and a number of this year's award winners. Burton has devoted 33 years (more than half his life) as an AYSO volunteer; Cherie has volunteered for over 35 years. The slide show about Burton and Cherie left me speechless. They truly represent what makes AYSO so special: an overwhelming feeling that all of the people connected with AYSO are connected with each other and, as many folks stated; are part of one big family.

During my time as an observer of the NAGM I had the chance to attend meetings, to learn about various protocols and procedures, and hear about proposed amendments to bylaws, rules and regulations. Yet, most interesting for me was the opportunity to spend time with so many wonderful regional commissioners (RCs) from every state in the nation to learn about issues unique to their state and region (Imagine being the commissioner for New York City. Not like trying to find fields in rural Iowa?)

I made a point of meeting and talking with as many RCs before my keynote to get a "pulse" of what the big issues were that their communities are facing. It was also a chance to see if I needed to tweak or adjust my speech to address those issues. Overall, the general concerns were about the economy (not surprising) and the future direction of the AYSO to keep pace with what families are seeking for their children's sports experience. These concerns were reflected in the proposed bylaw amendments.

Promoting player development

One proposed bylaw amendment was to add Player Development to the five philosophies the AYSO has had since its inception in 1964: Everyone Plays^TM, Balanced Teams, Open Registration, Positive Coaching and Good Sportsmanship.

The amendment (which ultimately passed) stated as follows: "We believe all players should be able to develop their soccer skills and knowledge to the best of their abilities, both individually and as members of a team, in order to maximize their enjoyment of the game." The new philosophy goes into effect August 1, 2009 and the change will roll through materials as they are reprinted to ensure there is minimal budget impact at any level of the organization. The new philosophy will be incorporated into AYSO's by-laws and its mission statement. As I have written in the past, too often in today's youth sports player development takes a back seat to winning. It was great to see the AYSO include player development as an express goal of the organization.

"Three quarters play" rule

Another rule change was dubbed the ‘three quarters play" rule. Proposed by Lorrie Maher of New York, it would have required, in addition to the existing AYSO rule requiring that every player play at least half of the game, that all team members play at least three quarters of the game before any team member would be allowed to play the entire game.

From my years as a soccer coach, youth sports parent and administrator, and from the emails I get from kids and parents every day, I know at the top of their list of complaints is lack of equal playing time. The number one reason kids drop out of team sports, as a recent study by the Women's Sports Foundation again confirmed, continues to be because they aren't having fun (cited by 39% of both boys and girls). I believe most of those kids, and probably some of the 15% of boys and girls in the WSF survey who say they dropped out because they "weren't good enough players," did so because they weren't getting enough playing time and didn't see the point of sitting on a bench most of the game while other kids played the entire game. Kids know that to get better in the sport they need to play, especially in games.

I have long advocated - both in my book, Home Team Advantage, and on this website - in favor of an equal playing time rule for kids before 6th grade and a significant playing time rule during middle school and at levels below high school varsity. I thought this was a golden opportunity to set the AYSO apart from all the other youth sports clubs who have become complacent about the 50% playing time rule.

Worth implementing

Unfortunately, Lorrie's amendment did not pass. But that doesn't mean it isn't worthy of implementation. If you are a soccer coach (or a baseball coach, basketball coach, football coach; whatever team sport you are coaching), why not make it your rule: that everyone plays 75% before anyone plays 100%? Or you could propose it be implemented at the club or league level.

I always made it my policy that everyone on my team played three-quarters of the games and I alternated the players that played the entire game. I encouraged kids to take "byes" as a family day, so that when I had a fuller roster we could pull off the ¾ policy. I hope that Lorrie continues to educate people on the importance of her amendment change.

Imagine how a parent would feel knowing that her child (1) had a chance to play three quarters of every game if he/she wanted to; (2) rest during the game; (3) take a game off occasionally to spend time with his or her family? That's a recipe for a great youth sports experience with tremendous value! The first club that promotes such policies will surely see its numbers double.

I left the weekend with many new friends and a strengthened partnership with the folks at AYSO and plan on many years of writing about all they are doing right.

QUESTION: How do you feel about a 3/4 play rule? Has your child's coach, club or league been one of the first to adopt this rule? Does it work? Please register so you can leave your comment below.

Today, I did something I had never done before. As a member of ASTM International's subcommittee on standards for headgear and helmets, I had the privilege of voting on a proposed helmet standard, in this case a new standard developed for headgear in women's lacrosse.

I voted in favor of the proposed standard (balloting closes today, so the results aren't yet known; if there are objections, they must be addressed before the standard moves to the second and final balloting phase among a larger portion of ASTM membership).  But I didn't vote in favor because I necessarily think that introducing helmets into the women's game is a good idea (as anyone who follows the sport of women's lacrosse knows, the issue has been the subject of furious and often heated debate in recent years, well-chronicled in a recent article on the US Lacrosse's website, which also contains a very helpful discussion of how the ASTM standard now being voted on was developed).

Instead, I voted to approve the draft standard because, without an established standard in place to regulate the headgear that has come on to the market in recent years (none of which, according to US Lacrosse, has been developed based on scientific testing, and none of which the organization - the governing body for both the men's and women's game - has endorsed), consumers are essentially "buying a pig in a poke": in other words, without a clue as to whether the product they are buying has any safety value at all.

Whether headgear in the women's game will make the game safer, of course, is open to debate. The data, says Dawn Comstock, PhD, a professor of Epidemiology for the Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education, and Research (PIPER) program at the Colorado School of Public Health, MomsTeam Institute Board of Advisor and a co-author of a 2014 study on injuries in high school lacrosse [1], "is quite clear - boys most commonly sustain concussions (nearly 75%) from athlete-athlete contact, the kind of mechanism we all know helmets don't always do a great job preventing - while girls most commonly sustain concussions (nearly 64%) from being struck by the ball or the stick, the kind of mechanism that helmets are actually quite good at preventing. Thus, this data clearly supports the call to put girls lacrosse players in helmets." 

But, as a former college lacrosse and high school field hockey player, I have reservations about whether requiring female lacrosse and field hockey players to wear helmets will make the sports safer, or, as a result of the phenomenon called risk compensation, actually result in more, rather than fewer, head injuries.

But the only way we will know the answer to that question is to make sure that whatever helmets female lacrosse players wear meet standards that are based on science, and have been developed after a deliberative and collaborative process by an independent organization, like ASTM, which is not funded by helmet manufacturers (unlike NOCSAE), and which does not just invite, but requires input from equipment manufacturers, product testing laboratories, researchers and governing bodies, in this case US Lacrosse.

From the numerous conversations (both on the telephone and via email) that both MomsTEAM's Senior Health and Safety Editor, Lindsey Barton Straus, and I have had over the years with our friends at US Lacrosse, especially CEO, Steve Stenersen (who I started talking to way back in 1999-2000), director of health and sport safety, Bruce Griffin (who was one of the principal authors of the draft standard), and Ann Carpenetti, vice president of lacrosse operations and co-chair of the women's lacrosse headgear task group, I am confident that the draft standard is based on sound science.

My hat is off to US Lacrosse (which, by the way, is an organization that I highlighted in my book, Home Team Advantage, for having a Board of Directors, unlike almost all other sports governing bodies, comprised equally of men and women), for providing the funding needed to design testing protocols and conduct the testing which yielded the data and measurements used in shaping the new headgear standard. 

US Lacrosse is acutely aware that developing a headgear performance standard that spurs the introduction of protective equipment designed to limit peak head acceleration resulting from an impact to less than 80g of linear force without introducing additional safety hazards (such as by encouraging more stick contact to the head) is a significant challenge.  

"It's our hope that developing a women's lacrosse-specific headgear standard that reflects the significant rule and culture differences between boys' and girls' lacrosse will mitigate the focal impact forces that occur from stick-to-head contact in the girl's game while maintaining the integrity of girls' lacrosse. Whether or not that results in a reduction of concussive events in girls' lacrosse is unknown, although we will certainly be studying it," said Stenersen.

At the same time, US Lacrosse has been correct to point out that protective equipment should be viewed as just one essential element in producing a safe playing experience.  Months before the Florida High School Athletic Association voted in late September to mandate soft headgear for girls lacrosse for the 2015 season, Stenersen told MomsTEAM that he believed it would be "highly irresponsible" for high school associations and youth leagues to focus solely on requiring increased protective equipment if it meant ignoring what Stenersen viewed as "the most critical component to a safer, more enjoyable lacrosse experience: requiring nationally-standardized, sport-specific training for coaches and officials as a fundamental qualification to assure that the boys' and girls' lacrosse is being taught (and the rules are being enforced) correctly."  

Well said, Steve. Well said. 

1. Xiang J, Collins C, McKenzie L, R Comstock. Lacrosse Injuries Among High School Boys and Girls in the United States: Academic Years 2008-2009. Am J Sport Med; 2014. DOI: 10.1177/036354651453991 (published online July 22, 2014)