WBAY (Green Bay, WI)
February 14, 2025
If your child plays sports, a new large-scale study right here in Wisconsin found wearing a soft shell helmet, also known as puffy helmets, during practice had no effect on the rates of sports-related concussions.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Erin Hammer, is an assistant professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
She and her team worked alongside players and coaches for 41 Wisconsin high school football teams. That’s a total of about 2,600 players during the 2023 football season.
Individual teams decided who would wear the caps. Some of the players wore the Football Guardian Cap XT during practice and some never wore them. The caps were not worn during games.
They compared concussion rates between the players who did not wear Guardian Caps during practice and the players who did. Researchers found no difference between the two groups.
Of the 64 concussions sustained during practice, 33 happened to players wearing Guardian caps and 31 players without puffy helmets.
U.W. Health says head injuries were assessed by the teams’ athletic trainers.
The trainers also kept track of helmet models, how the caps were used, and the number of times a player practiced or played in a football game.
U.W. Health says previous lab tests suggested the extra padding in Guardian caps could reduce the force of impact to a player’s head.
This study had a large sample size, and Dr. Hammer had it all peer-reviewed.
Her advice is to incorporate ways to reduce sports-related head injury rates that are supported by data, including having athletic trainers available and rule changes to limit contact during practice and at kick-off.
“I hope that there are other groups out there that can try to do a similar study and replicate our findings. This is a single study, so you have to take our findings with a grain of salt,” Hammer acknowledged. “I’d be interested in doing a randomized trial. I would also be interested in repeating this type of study in collegiate or professional athletes.”
Hammer says given the size of the study it seems if Guardian caps did protect against sports-related concussions in high school players they would have seen that result.
This is one of very few studies to evaluate how the caps perform in real-world conditions.
It was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.