The Dallas Morning News
August 12, 2024
Carter Hogg, an Episcopal School of Dallas graduate, invented a concussion prevention cap after his brother suffered a career-ending head injury.
Carter Hogg’s concussion-prevention idea began as a sketch on a notecard. Then, he graduated to a miniature prototype he tried out on some action figures he found in a dusty box in storage.
His invention evolved into a life-sized product for football players to wear during games to reduce the risk of serious head injuries. His company, G8RTech (pronounced gator tech), developed the G8RSkin and a newer model, the Shiesty, a padded balaclava that is worn underneath helmets. Football players at seven Dallas-Fort Worth high schools tested the product this spring.
Hogg, a 2022 Episcopal School of Dallas graduate and a junior defensive back at Johns Hopkins in Maryland, was inspired to join the protective equipment game after his older brother, FJ Hogg, suffered a career-ending concussion and a traumatic brain injury as a linebacker for Washington and Lee in Virginia. It took two years for FJ to recover.
Hogg’s initial design looked like a medieval helmet a knight would wear into battle. After redesigning prototypes his senior year at ESD and in his first year of college, Hogg came up with the original G8RSkin, which launched in May 2023.
After laboratory testing, Hogg initiated a 100-athlete pilot program to gain feedback. He also wore the product during Johns Hopkins’ football season last fall.
“Definitely had a couple hits where if I wasn’t wearing it, I would not have been OK,” Hogg told The Dallas Morning News.
He described one play in which he collided with a teammate who had to be carried off the field, while he was able to continue playing.
“I can only imagine what it would have been like without it,” he said of the G8RSkin.
Other athletes had similar comments about its ability to protect, Hogg said, but many said the concussion cap was too heavy and made it difficult to hear.
“Being an athlete myself, it was really important to make sure it’s not just something that’s protective, but that’s actually practical to wear,” Hogg said. “Admittedly, the first version wasn’t quite there yet, but we thought it was still important to get people wearing it.”
Hogg designed the G8RSkin Shiesty, which is a third of the weight of the original, at just eight ounces, and has a lower profile because it does not extend down the chest. It pulls over the head and includes perforations over the ears for unobstructed hearing on the field.
The modified cap even scored higher than the original in testing that measured its reduction in concussion risk at 79% on the upper side of the head. The Southern Impact Research Center delivered repeated blows to a crash test dummy head wearing the product.
Hogg also tested the Shiesty this spring on about 80 players from seven Dallas-area high school football teams: Allen, Wylie, Garland, Sachse, Mesquite, Midlothian Heritage and Highland Park.
The feedback Hogg received was exponentially better, aesthetically and performance-wise, than the original G8RSkin.
“It’s a great idea,” Midlothian Heritage head coach Eric Edwards said. “They have a lot of studies that would make it a no-brainer that everybody should wear it, but I also know it is going to be hot with that padding.”
Hogg said the Shiesty features a built-in pocket for cooling gel packs along the neckline to prevent players from getting too hot.
Wylie senior running back Josh Osborne, in a testimonial video for G8RTech, said the concussion cap feels comfortable and that he didn’t notice a difference while wearing it.
“I do actually like it a lot,” he said. “We got into contact the other day. First play, head-to-head contact. I really didn’t feel anything. It was really nice.”
The Shiesty costs $99 on G8RTech’s website and comes in sizes small to extra large.
After players tried it in the spring, Edwards said he provided flyers and information on the cap to parents and said they could purchase it for the upcoming season. He said he won’t know until practice starts Monday if anyone plans to wear it.
“If I end up having a couple guys that really like it, and they want to wear it, then I would go about buying it and getting it for those few kids,” he said.
Prevent concussions, increase participation
Hogg said he hopes the preventive gear will curb the decline of youth participation in football, hockey and other helmet sports. Since 2016, tackle football participation rates for kids ages 6 to 12 have decreased 29%, according to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play 2022 analysis.
“Just knowing what those sports can do in developing you as a person and all the lessons you get taught, it’s super important to be able to preserve those sports,” Hogg said, “and let people continue to play them just in a safer environment without having to erode the foundation of what makes them so great.”
The Johns Hopkins student is also concerned with protecting football players after their careers end. In a 2023 study by Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center, 345 out of the 376 former NFL players (91.8%) studied had CTE, a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries.
“How are you when you are 30, 40, 60 [years old]?,” Hogg said. “Are you still able to do things that you would normally want to do? Are you able to function on an everyday basis? What we can do to make things safer is the best way to go about it.”
Hogg plans to continue improving the Shiesty. The company is also releasing a neck laceration protector for youth hockey players, a new USA Hockey requirement, and considering other forms of protective gear, such as shoulder pads.
“There is a lot that can be done with protective equipment,” Hogg said. “It’s been pretty stagnant in a lot of areas.
“Helmets have seen a lot of development here in the last decade, if you just look at the progress of what I was wearing in middle school compared to what people are wearing now, but that’s because of people really shining a light on the issue and those companies really being forced to innovate. I don’t think you’ve truly seen that with a lot of these other products.”