Syracuse football players wear helmet covers made by a Georgia company

SYRACUSE — Members of the Syracuse University football team are into their second season of wearing the black-colored Guardian caps on their helmets during practice sessions.

The Guardian cap is a removable, soft-shell layer that covers the exterior of a football player’s helmet, according to an Aug. 4, 2014, article posted on cuse.com, the website of SU athletics. 

The caps are designed to “reduce the impact the head takes,” according to the article.

The Orange began wearing the Guardian caps in the 2014 spring practice and donned them for the first time in the following preseason camp.

“I just feel like it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Scott Shafer, head football coach, said in the 2014 news release. “You don’t hear that cracking of the helmets in practice, which I’d imagine has to be a good thing.”

The football players wear the caps to “try to disperse the forces that are applied to the helmet,” says Denny Kellington, head athletic trainer for Syracuse football.

He is responsible for all phases of athletic training for the football program and also mentors the graduate assistant athletic-training staff.

Kellington spoke to CNYBJ on Aug. 25.

Syracuse assistant coaches Tim Lester and Joe Adam had used the caps during their time at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois and recommended Syracuse use the caps as well, according to Kellington.

He sought opinions from athletic-training and sports-medicine personnel at other schools already using the caps. The schools included Clemson University, which the Orange plays annually in football as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

“The opinions that I received from those individuals was positive, and I presented that to our administration, and then it was approved,” says Kellington. 

Concussions “still can occur,” he notes.

“From a health and safety standpoint, if we can reduce the time loss or the severity of a concussion, why wouldn’t we try it,” says Kellington.

Kellington joined the Syracuse sports medicine staff in 2005, according to his profile on cuse.com. 

He is a member of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association; the Eastern Athletic Trainers’ Association; and the New York State Athletic Trainers’ Association; and serves as the treasurer of the ACC Sports Medicine Association. 

The company that makes the caps

The manufacturer of the Guardian caps — Peachtree Corners, Georgia–based Guardian — is a “technology and material sciences company that does development for the military and other commercial businesses,” according to its website.

The company says on the site that its impact-absorption tests have shown the Guardian cap reduces impact up to 33 percent. The patented caps weigh less than 8 ounces each.

However, the Guardian site includes this warning: “No helmet, practice apparatus, or helmet pad can prevent or eliminate the risk of concussions or other serious head injuries while playing sports. Researchers have not reached an agreement on how the results of impact-absorption tests relate to concussions. No conclusions about a reduction of risk or severity of concussive injury should be drawn from impact-absorption tests.”

More than 40,000 youth, high school, and college players wear the Guardian cap, the company says.

The caps sell for $59.95 each on the website.