Newer, Better High School Football Helmets Still No Guarantee Against Brain Injuries

(KPIX 5) -- It's not only America's highest-paid athletes back on the gridiron this fall - it's the Bay Area's best and brightest: high school students with concerned parents on the sidelines. And in the sport known to produce the highest incidence of concussion, we took a look at what's being done to protect those growing brains.

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In the late afternoon sunshine, the Mission San Jose High School football team gathered in a quick huddle.

"Warriors on three!" one player shouted. "One, two, three, Warriors!" his teammates yelled in response.

When the Warriors hit the practice field in Fremont, each is wearing some of the $1000 worth of gear issued to every player. The helmets alone cost about $300.

"That's the most critical piece of safety equipment we have," said head coach Sam Baugh. "Our helmets are checked into what we call the 'arms room' every night."

Baugh chooses which models to use based on a rating system produced by Virginia Tech University.

CHECK YOUR SCHOOL'S HELMETS:Database Of Local Teams' Helmet Choices

"It's the only thing we have--outside the vendors--to go by to rate a helmet to make sure we're doing everything we can to put our kids in the proper or safest equipment out there," he explained.

Virginia Tech has produced the helmet ratings for four years now, on a scale of one to five stars, from worst to best for reducing head acceleration, and therefore - they say - reducing the risk of concussion.

"The risk is dramatic," said Virginia Tech professor of biomedical engineering Stefan Duma. "For example, if you move from a one-star helmet to some of the better four and five star helmets, you cut your concussion rate in half."

Duma says when they launched the ratings, only one manufacturer made a 5-star helmet. Now there are nine 5-star helmets made by four different companies. But he's not ready to say helmets are the ultimate key to safety.

"The rules and the coaching are the most important," Duma said. "The equipment is really the third layer of protection."

On the field at Mission, all varsity players wear 5-star rated helmets. Everyone else has at least a 4-star. But Coach Baugh agrees the helmet isn't everything.

"What we found was it didn't matter what helmet we put the kid in, it came to the technique the kid was using," Baugh said. "No helmet would prevent a concussion."

So the Warriors adopted a heads-up tackling system - and watched their concussions drop from six per season... to one.

Players are taught to adopt a defensive body posture, lowering themselves before they make contact with an opponent. They swing their arms from back to front, the momentum carrying their hips forward, and head back out of the way.

Baugh's not looking at it like just another style, but a new era for the game he loves. He won't put players on the field that don't do it. And he won't hire coaches that won't teach it.

"Safety advancements are going to come," he explained. "We just have to be able to put our ego on the shelf and allow the game to change so that it's safer, so that more people can enjoy it long after we're gone."

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Mission San Jose High School Head Coach Sam Baugh explains "helmetless" tackling in detail.

Mission San Jose Warriors: http://www.msj-football.com/

CHECK YOUR SCHOOL'S HELMETS: 
Look up your high school football team's helmet here. Not every school responded to our request for information.

Once you have the brand and model, check the star rating according to the Virginia Tech rating guide here. (Not every single model was included in the ratings. For Adams helmets, Adams USA Inc. is no longer selling football helmets. The company tells us they have sold that part of their business to Schutt.)

Keep in mind, lead researcher Stefan Duma says the ratings system isn't everything - that you want to have the best rules and coaching possible first.

And one manufacturer that makes 5-star rated helmets even told us, "We believe that helmets cannot significantly reduce even the risk of concussion."

SCROLL DOWN TO FIND YOUR SCHOOL, BY COUNTY:
ONCE YOU KNOW THE HELMET TYPE, CHECK ITS STAR RATING HERE:Virgina Tech Helmet Ratings

In:
• Concussion
• San Jose