DENVER — Boulder High School head football coach Jesse Jones loves the sport, but he knows safety is a big concern for a lot of parents.
“I’m not going to lie to a family and guarantee that their son is not going to be susceptible to injury, mainly concussions,” he told Denver7 Wednesday.
The Denver Broncos are trying to help. Their ALL IN. ALL COVERED. campaign is delivering more than 15,000 high-tech helmets to every high school tackle football program in Colorado over the next four years.
- Watch our initial coverage in the video player below
The Broncos and Riddell hosted a “caravan” Wednesday night at Empower Field at Mile High to showcase the helmets to parents, coaches, players and school administrators.
“It comes down to putting Colorado high school football players in the safest Riddell helmet that's made available to high school football programs, keeping Colorado kids safe,” said Bobby Mestas, director of youth & high school football for the Denver Broncos.
Mestas said Wednesday night’s caravan is the first of six events planned across the state.
According to Riddell, the Axiom helmet has an improved shell, facemask and visor, but that’s just the start.
“The best most protective helmet is actually the best fitting helmet,” said Erin Griffin, senior vice president of marketing communications for Riddell. “And so utilizing our True Fit technology, we actually take a series of images of an athlete's head and build them a helmet that's configured for their head.”
“The helmet comes with a sensor pad, and that unit tracks impacts,” Mestas explained. “And then the coach has a sideline device that is connected to the sensor pads via Bluetooth. And so every impact that takes place during a game or practice, the coach then receives an aggregated report daily, weekly, that shows what the load was. It shows the intensity of hits.”
Schools don’t have to use the data to receive the helmets. Our partners at the Denver Post reported some school districts were worried about student privacy, or that the data could be used against schools in the case of an injury.
“The data that is transmitted is de-identified data, but ultimately, it's up to the schools,” said Mestas. “We feel confident that we're going to get all, if not most, schools, on board.”
The Broncos and Riddell said the data will help teams keep an extra eye on their players’ health.
“You can never take enough steps to make sure, or to ensure, that these young men and women are being protected when they go play such a game that has a lot of collisions on a Friday night,” said Jones. “So thank you, Denver Broncos.”
Riddell hopes to be able to deliver the helmets to schools by this May.
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