First-ever youth football helmet standard promises better protection from head injuries
BLACKSBURG, Va. (SOA) — The deadly brain disease CTE can begin in children who suffer head injuries and concussions while playing youth football. That's why protecting the heads of young players is so crucial. But many of the helmets these children wear are making them more vulnerable to that danger. We went to the country's leading helmet testing lab to meet the man who uncovered the hidden hazard, which led to America's first youth helmet standards.
At the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, football helmets are battered by mechanical rams and dropped in hard landings.
The hits are loud and powerful, but very real simulations of hits taken in the game of football.
Director Steve Rowson built the system, and he and his team have conducted tens of thousands of simulated head impacts to gather data and rate the helmets for how well they perform in protecting players from violent blows and concussions.
For years, Spotlight on America has documented the dangers of repeated, concussive blows to the head that can lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease that has claimed countless lives, including hundreds of NFL players who had CTE when they died.
We've highlighted the little-known danger to populations outside of professional football players, from domestic violence survivors, to servicemembers, and one that continues to emerge: young athletes, who play the game of football from childhood.
At the helmet lab, Rowson and his team use a 5-star safety system to rate helmets, and competition for 5-star status has been a game-changer, producing much safer helmets protecting players across America. (In fact, Virginia Tech recently overhauled its rating system to accommodate the rapid improvements.)
In 2011, Rowson began studying head impacts to pre-high school players, as young as nine, and noticed unique and disturbing dangers faced by children who take the field, with their brains and bodies still developing.
Two years ago, we featured Zac Easter, who suffered numerous concussions from playing football from a young age.
Zac was a star linebacker at Indianola High School, outside Des Moines, Iowa, known as a fierce, hard-hitting competitor.
In 2015, Zac shot and killed himself after CTE clouded his brain.
His mom, Brenda, tearfully remembers her son.
"Our hearts were broken," she said.
A 2023 study underscored the danger for young people. Dr. Ann McKee and her team examined the brains of 152 young people, all who died when they were under the age of 30. Most of them played football, soccer, hockey and other sports only at high school and college level. 63 of them tested positive for CTE, or 41.4%. The youngest brain confirmed with CTE was from a 17-year-old.
"There's no way I can look at this and not be completely horrified," Dr. McKee told Spotlight on America at the time.
To put it into perspective, McKee said a general population brain bank sees about 1% of brains with CTE. To see that number climb to 40% when looking at youth athletes underscores a real danger.
At Virginia Tech, Rowson and his team started placing sensors called accelerometers inside youth football helmets to get real-time data about skull acceleration.
It led to a startling conclusion about how young football players experience head impact.
"A college football player, typical concussion at the time was around 100 Gs," Rowson said. "What we were seeing in the youth football players is about 60 Gs. So, it's 40% less."
In 2019, Rowson and his co-authors published a study finding that children are "more vulnerable to brain injury" than adults because they have "differences in tolerance to concussion."
In addition, children have a unique vulnerability caused by the fact that they have bigger heads and weaker necks.
"It’s harder to support your head as you're going down to the ground," explained Rowson. "So your body hits the ground and then your head follows through."
A heavy helmet that protects older players, Rowson and his team discovered, actually contributes to concussions by accelerating the force of those ground impacts.
Dr. Robert Cantu, a renowned neurosurgeon, provided an analogy.
"You've got a bobblehead doll effect," he said, "with these kids having many of their concussions when they fall to the ground and then their head slaps back or slaps forward because they don't have the strength to keep it straight."
Dr. Cantu is one of the country's leading experts on sports injuries and co-founder of the CTE Center in Boston with Dr. Ann McKee. He's also the Vice President of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or NOCSAE, which for the first time, passed youth helmet standards, including a critical cut to their weight.
Starting in 2027, the new standards will mandate that youth helmets provide maximum protection, be tested using a smaller head-form, and weigh no more than 3.5 pounds.
Helmets currently sold to youth players can weigh up to 4.5 pounds. Of the top 34 youth helmets on the market, nearly 65% currently exceed the new weight limit.
While Dr. Cantu makes it clear the new standards won't eliminate all the dangers, he believes the lighter helmets will make the game safer for young players.
"I'm confident that the helmet and the specifications for the youth football helmet that NOCSAE’s put forward will decrease the risk for our youth from taking hits to the head," he said.
Back at Virginia Tech's helmet lab, Rowson and his team are proud they played a pivotal role in protecting the heads of children who play the game at a young age, agreeing that this change will save lives.
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Manufacturers will be required to make lighter helmets that adhere to the new standard no later than September 1, 2027. But there are serious questions about the cost of making that happen.
We tackle the challenges now faced by schools and youth football leagues to provide this better protection in our next report.
