WEST HAVEN >> University of New Haven soccer player Oskar Sewerin suffered a concussion last year. He said the concussion symptoms were bad enough, but what hurt more was the week of school he had to miss due to the head injury.
“We’re here for an education first of all,” he said. “I think that just to miss school because of a concussion, its something that’s really bad.”
Stories like Sewerin’s are why UNH teamed up with TriAx, a company based in Norwalk that manufactures wireless impact sensors for non-contact and contact sports, and will become the first school in the country to use it’s head trauma tracking headgear. The sensors in the caps and headbands are called Smart Impact Monitors. They keep track of any hit an athlete takes to the head.
Any contact made to the head is registered on a chip inside the caps and head bands. The information on the chip automatically goes into a computer that tracks impact and the number of hits to the head an athlete has sustained.
The men’s and women’s soccer players demonstrated how they work Tuesday at a press conference. West Haven native Nicole Pacapelli, a senior on the women’s soccer team, said they feel like regular head bands. She has never had a concussion, but said a teammate sustaining one can bring down the whole team.
“We’ve had people on the team with concussions and they’ve been out four or five months,” the senior said. “It’s really hurt us. It hurts them as players, that’s a lot of time off to take. Hopefully this research helps coaches and athletes understand head impact better.”
The soccer and football players will begin using the headgear immediately. Athletic Director Debbie Chin said this will help student-athletes perform both on and off the field.
“You can’t have success without having student-athletes who are healthy,” she said. “As the president said (during the press conference) they’re here to get an education.”
She said TriAx contacted her about the headgear and she jumped at the chance to use it. She said the headgear could also be used for other sports, like basketball.
The football team only had running backs and linebackers wear the headgear during practice, because their aren’t enough for the entire team yet. The linebackers and running backs were chosen because they would sustain the most hits. Coach Pete Rossomando said by next week all the players will wear it. Rossomando said that if the headgear keeps concussions down, he wouldn’t be surprised to see other schools wearing it in the future, too.
“I think schools are just going to adopt it because they think it is going to help them,” he said.
He said too many athletes suffer head injuries and having this extra knowledge will come in handy. After practice he said they would check each player’s data to see what they can learn from the first practice using it.
“We’re going to look at it on a daily basis,” the coach said. “Especially if there’s some type of event. Specifically if there’s hitting drills, we’d like to see what the data comes back as and how players respond to it.”