High tech helmets to debut this fall in East Tennessee

 

(WBIR-Greenback) While it's months before week zero for high school football, the Greenback Cherokees have been hard at work over some new equipment for this fall.

"There will be sensors inside six of the helmets," Jason Hicks, the head football coach at Greenback said, explaining the new helmets from Riddell, called "Insite."

"Provide real-time data to our trainers and coaches staff about significant impacts to those six kids," he added.

Sensors are placed inside the pads in the helmet. When someone gets hit, a handheld monitor will record the impact: showing which player was involved, where on the head, and the speed of collision.

"This gives me something subjective to say this kid got hit in the head, pretty hard, significantly to a concussion," said trainer David Ivens. "I don't depend on his subjective reporting that he was hit in the head pretty hard."

The team will get the helmets next month. Hicks said his team will be the one of the first teams regionally with this technology.

"They're about $1,000 for six of them, that's a significant amount of money," Coach Hicks said. "The hope is if a kid is concussed, this will provide our training staff more data to support that and evaluate that."

He said the helmets were funded by Blount Memorial Hospital and Broadway Flower Shop in Lenoir City. Hicks said if this technology proves successful, Greenback will purchase more of these helmets next season.