TEMPLE, Texas — Player safety continues to evolve as the NFL will allow players to wear guardian caps in regular season games.
"I think it's a good idea — I mean, obviously with the way this game is and everyone's getting bigger, stronger and faster and collisions and impacts are happening you know, more than than they're not," University head football coach Kaeron Johnson said.
"At the end of the day, I think safety is very, very important," Lake Belton head football coach Brian Cope said.
"I tell our kids all the time and I tell their parents that I believe that safety is our number one priority and we wanna make sure that our kids get the proper equipment. If there is knee braces for alignment, if there is shoulder harnesses for kids who have shoulder injuries or things like that," Cope said.
Some schools in Central Texas neighborhoods already have guardian caps and certain positions wear them during practices.
"I understood why we were wore them, you know, to limit the initial contact that we have with our heads. So, I was okay with it," Lake Belton center Brett Harmon said. "I definitely could tell by the lack of airflow that it's gonna be a little harder to like breathe and stuff and it's just gonna feel a little hotter. But I mean, you just get acclimated to that," Harmon said.
"You know, our kids are only freshmen and sophomores, what three years ago. We wanted to make sure as they continue to mature and continue to get physically bigger that we tried to limit, as best we can for possible concussions," Cope said.
While the change is happening, it's not an overnight decision for all local schools as for some of them, it's not in the budget.
"With the cost of the helmet being $400, I mean, you think about that price and throw a guardian cap on it before you know it's $600 to outfit one kid," Johnson said. "It's just not in a lot of people's budget...but until they come up with the solution or combining them or whatever it is, I think that the NFL and probably the NCAA will be the only two that are truly dabbling with it," he said.
Whether it comes down the high school level or not, the game of football is evolving.
