The days of leather football helmets gave way to hard-shelled head protectors three-quarters of a century ago — just one example of how football equipment has been improved for safety reasons, particularly with the head in mind, throughout the years. So, why not some schedule alterations as part of the efforts to limit injuries among hard-hitting athletes too?

On Saturday, December 6, Newtown High School’s football team took on Xavier of Middletown (see related story) in the semifinals of the newly/temporarily formed Class LL-Small division of the state football playoffs.

The Nighthawks and Xavier were among eight state qualifying teams in Class LL with a one in four chance of winning a state title. Wait, the numbers don’t add up? No, that math is accurate. That’s because the eight teams were reseeded, based on school enrollment, into Large and Small brackets of four teams, meaning there will be two Class LL state champions this year. Same goes for Class L, M, and S. In other words, the number of state champions will double from four to eight this season.

The reason: The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) is following advice from the State Medical Society Sport Medicine Committee to limit the number of games — as well as the amount of contact — football players have each fall.

Joel Cookson, CIAC director of media and sports information, noted that the committee advised the CIAC that the previous format which featured three rounds of playoffs beginning less than a week from the conclusion of the regular season was not advisable, at least not without other changes to the format of the regular campaign. At the time the information was considered and a subsequent decision by the CIAC was made to make changes, high school schedules were already made for this past fall.

“Due to that, and due to not wanting to reduce the number of teams qualifying for the postseason, we established this one-year format in which we have only two rounds of play,” said Cookson, adding that the CIAC will return to four divisions and three rounds of state playoffs next year, but with some new regulations to limit contact during the regular season.

Prior to this year’s changes, many teams played Thanksgiving Day games and had very quick turnarounds with state playoff quarterfinal round games a small handful of days later, on Tuesday, followed by another shortened week for preparation and recovery with semifinals on Saturday, before finally getting six days or a full week before the championship game.

Newtown Coach Steve George, a former player at Newtown High, is a proponent of the changes given how rigorous the schedule has been throughout the years.

“It’s a lot on these kids,” George said of playing as many as four games in about three weeks on the heels of a ten- or 11-game campaign with no bye weeks. “I think it’s a good job by the state,” the coach said.

New Guidelines

Under the guidelines that the CIAC approved for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, there must be four to five days between games during the three-game playoff series starting the Tuesday after Thanksgiving (specific days yet to be determined) so there still stand to be as many as three games in a truncated playoff time period, but with a caveat.

The regular season will be limited to ten contests including any league playoffs (this year, Newtown played 12 games — including the South-West Conference championship clash — prior to competing in the state playoffs). One week will be added to the length of the season, allowing for a bye week with no live contact for players.

Cookson says it is up to each conference whether to maintain its championship game or do away with it so as to allow for a ten-game schedule. Beginning next year, there will be no SWC championship game. Newtown High School Athletic Director Gregg Simon said he and other officials opted to do away with the title game since maintaining it will reduce the number of games all but two conference teams would get to play down to nine.

The CIAC’s regulations to limit player-to-player contact are as follows (this is a two-year trial with the arrangement subject to change beginning with the 2017 campaign):

Preseason will last two to three weeks with a maximum of 120 minutes of contact time per week, and week one will be for conditioning only. During the competition season, teams will be limited to 90 minutes of contact per week through each of the first nine games of the season, but with no contact allowed during that bye week. After game nine, 45 minutes of live person-to-person contact will be permitted. If game nine is played the Thursday, Friday, or Saturday prior to Thanksgiving (the week which has been reserved for conference championships), no live contact will be allowed between games nine and ten. After game ten (throughout the state playoff timetable), no live contact will be permitted. The number of playoff-qualifying teams will be limited to 32, which is in keeping with the eight-team per division format that has been used. All schools with football programs are required to participate in the Reporting Information Online Internet-based injury surveillance system study for football only.

“The CIAC is always looking out for the best interest of our high school athletes,” Simon said.

Concussion Concerns

Among the biggest concerns with contact sports such as football is head injuries, and the attitude of toughing it out and going back on the field, hiding injuries, is one that officials and doctors have been working to change.

“I’m sure some people find ways to pretend they didn’t see it, or pretend it didn’t happen,” said Dr Carl Nissen, chairman of the Medical Aspects of Sports in the Connecticut State Medical Society. “You can’t stop that.”

So, officials are working to educate coaches, parents, players, and doctors to understand the importance of not ignoring possible injury, Nissen said.

Nissen, who is a doctor with Elite Sports Medicine, Sports Medicine Division at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, says he sees 65 sports-related concussions per week — most of which are among high school and middle school athletes, with a bulk of the cases being for high school freshmen and sophomores. Nissen notes that the 65 does include follow-up visits, not strictly isolated cases. Regardless, “it’s a staggering number,” Nissen points out. “It’s off the charts.”

The reason high school freshmen and sophomores are most commonly diagnosed with concussions, Nissen explains, is because of improper techniques used when tackling or blocking, along with the fact they often are smaller than upperclassmen they come into contact with, and given they are perhaps more likely to try to hide injury and not take precautions to avoid further damage.

Nissen is among those who is hopeful that limiting the chances for football players to have impact will reduce the number of head injuries given “concussions, obviously, are force driven.”

The Ivy League, a couple of years ago, significantly reduced contact among players with new policies, Nissen points out. He believes the CIAC’s changes are for the better.

“I think it’s a huge positive step,” Nissen said.

Newtown High Athletic Trainer Sabrina Byrne says the school is ahead of the curve and is among high schools that have been using stricter guidelines in terms of limiting contact in practices for the past few years. Additionally, the coaching staff has emphasized the importance of not leading with their heads to make tackles, and has utilized tackling dummies and other pads to minimize player-on-play impact in practices. The result, she said, is a recognizable decrease in concussions. Byrne said she would typically see about ten concussions every football season, but that there have been far fewer since an emphasis has been put on less contact. This past season, for example, there were just two concussions that were football related.

“That’s a huge decrease,” she notes.

For years, leading with helmets was commonplace in the game of football. “Those days are long gone,” said George, adding that Newtown players practice proper tacking techniques every day to cut down on the risk of head injuries. The coach added that his program has put an emphasis on not practicing head-first tackling for the past five or six years thanks to education on the importance of head safety throughout the football community.

Byrne says that teaching (really scaring she points out) student-athletes helps reinforce the importance of them reporting symptoms. Athletes who sustain a second concussion before they are healed are subject to potentially more severe injury.

“If you hide it you really put yourself at serious risk of danger,” Byrne said is what she tells the athletes at the beginning of each season, adding that she informs them that consequences can include paralyzation or even death. 

George believes another contributor to declining concussions at NHS is implementation of the Guardian Cap, a soft shell that goes over the helmet, in practices. The equipment reduces the impact the head takes in a hit up to 33 percent, according to information on the product’s company website, guardiancaps.com.

 Helmets have evolved throughout the decades, with leather giving way to plastic, and eventually facemasks were added, and later energy-absorbing helmets came to be.

Byrne notes that Newtown High is among the schools at an advantage in monitoring injuries and evaluating athletes because she is a full-time employee, whereas many schools only have a part-time athletic trainer. She believes a requirement for all schools to have full-time trainers should be considered to help enforce the regulations.

“The rules are great. I just don’t know how the state expects schools to do all this without a full-time trainer,” Byrne said.

Although football is the leading sport for injuries, Byrne notes, during those years in which she saw about ten concussions during the football season, there were about 25 concussions in the other sports.

“Concussions are always going to happen unless you can learn to put cushions between your brain and your skull,” she said.

Dr Michael Brand of Danbury Orthopedic Associates, which provides medical coverage for Newtown High, among other area programs, believes cutting back on hard-hitting contact in practices is a good idea.

“Anything that can be done to help with concussions is beneficial to everybody,” Brand said.

Brand notes that other contact sports, such as boys’ hockey and lacrosse, have athletes who suffer concussions. He added that concussions are also very prevalent in girls’ soccer.

Newtown High is one of the schools to use the ImPACT computer-based testing program designed for the management of sports-related concussions. “Coaches have become much more educated in what to look for and what to see,” said Simon, adding that athletic trainers, as well, now have resources to better evaluate injured athletes.

The ImPACT test measures attention, memory, processing speed, and reaction time. In addition, it asks for the individual taking the test to indicate the presence and level of concussion symptoms, if they exist.

This is not the first time the CIAC football playoff format has changed. In fact, since 1976 — the first year a CIAC football postseason was held — there have been multiple alterations — but those changes weren’t injury prevention-driven.

There have been four playoff divisions every year except during two stints, from 1981 through 1994 and again from 2002 through 2009 when there were six divisions.

“The field expanded to six divisions initially because of concerns from coaches that fewer teams in football earned postseason opportunities than in other sports,” Cookson said. “It went back down to four divisions when the tournament expanded to include a quarterfinal round so that 32 teams qualified instead of 24.”

Next year, the three-time SWC champion Nighthawks won’t have another conference title to compete for, but they and other teams in the state will still have their eyes set on winning, all the while, keeping focused on trying to avoid injuries.