Six and seven-year old members of the Auburn Eagles youth football team in Montgomery County warm up before every game with hard-hitting, one-on-one drills. But how they prepare themselves that might soon change.
"It's still a wonderful sport, there's just little things we can do now to make it safer now that we've seen what happens," said Chris Slusher, Athletic Supervisor for Montgomery County Parks and Recreation.
Numbers coming out of a recent child helmet study conducted by Virginia Tech researcher and biomechanics professor Dr. Stefan Duma, showed children received impacts considered high even for college players.
"We actually had a high number of high impacts," said Duma.
The highest impact measured was at 100-G, as in gravitational force, concussion territory according to Duma. But most of those higher impacts happened in practice, or before games.
"When you look at what we can do for the future, there's a really quick fix here to make the game a lot better and a lot safer," said Duma.
Slusher says technique, will likely take the place of hard-hitting drills.
"I think the Oklahoma drill is a drill that probably needs to go away, and like i said focus more in on technique, the head to head blow, that's something we really need to take out of practice," said Slusher.
So while the debate over whether children this young should even be playing this violent sport is sure to continue, so will the research to help make the game these kids love safer.
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