28% of Long Island high schools are using Guardian Caps in hopes of making football safer. Will it work?

Half Hollow Hills West senior Salvatore Santoro was excited about the start of football practice in August — and to receive his equipment: helmet, shoulder pads and other assorted pieces of protective gear.

But there was something unusual in his assortment this year: a puffy, soft-shell covering that looked like a hat.

“I was like, ‘What is this?’ ” said Santoro, a lineman who plays offense and defense.

Like hundreds of other football players across Long Island in recent weeks, Santoro was introduced to the Guardian Cap, the latest protectant in football’s long fight to reduce the risk of concussions and to mitigate the long-term effects of head injuries and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. CTE is a degenerative disease affecting people who have suffered repeated concussions or hits to the head.

“We had them on for camp, and so far I think they help a lot,” Santoro said. “They protect you more. I definitely feel safer.”

Guardian Caps are a soft-shell layer of protective padding that attaches to the top of the hard-shell helmet. The cap has four straps that attach to the face mask and a Velcro strap that connects around the back of the helmet. The caps used at the high school level weigh about 7 ounces and are made by a Georgia-based company, Guardian Sports, which says the caps last about five years depending on the size, skill and position of the player and the number of hits it absorbs.

Newsday surveyed the 112 Long Island public, private and Catholic high schools that have football programs and found that 31 schools are using the caps for some or all of their players and 81, or about 72%, do not have any Guardian Caps. Even if the school does not provide the caps, players are permitted to purchase their own and wear them in practices and games if they choose to do so.

The caps used at the high school level cost between $55 and $75 each, depending on the number purchased. Some Long Island schools, such as Amityville and Westhampton, have purchased the caps for their players. Other schools, such as Herricks, Longwood and Miller Place, ran fundraisers to help pay for them.

The caps were approved by the New York State Public High School Athletic Association as optional equipment for games this season. At least one player on Long Island is wearing the cap in games.

Matt Pevsner, an offensive and defensive lineman on the East Meadow High School junior varsity team, had two concussions playing football as an eighth grader but wanted to keep playing. His parents researched ways they might be able to reduce the risk of a third concussion and purchased the Guardian Cap before he played in ninth grade. Pevsner is the only player in the East Meadow program who has a Guardian Cap.

"I wear it all the time," Pevsner, 15, said. "I hope it brings awareness to the importance of player safety and other guys start to wear them. I don't even know it's on the helmet when I'm playing. I believe it gives me more protection.”

Many of the Long Island players with whom Newsday spoke said they were fine wearing the cap in practice but not in games because the caps look strange and cover up the team's logo on the helmet. 

"The whole team wears the caps in practice," Miller Place quarterback Shane Kiernan said. "When it's game time, I want people to see the color of my helmet and our logo."

Jake Hanson, the COO of Guardian Sports, acknowledges that the look of the cap takes some getting used to and is something the company hopes to address.

"We set out to be a safety company, not an aesthetics company," Hanson said. "Our goal for next year is to have a cap that is more customizable. That way, players have that look of the helmet and representing their team and their community."

'Benefits aren't entirely clear'

According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, there were 16 deaths in the country among football players at all levels in 2023, including three due to traumatic brain injuries incurred during high school football games.

This past summer, Cohen Craddock, a middle schooler in West Virginia, died several days after suffering a head injury in practice. Caden Tellier, a varsity quarterback in Alabama, died the day after he suffered a severe head injury in his team’s opening game.

Craddock’s father is pushing for better safety protocols in youth football and said he thinks the Guardian Caps could help.

Chris Nowinski, a former NFL player and pro wrestler who is cofounder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization leading the fight against concussions and CTE, isn’t convinced the caps are making the game safer.

“I was skeptical with Guardian Caps at first,” Nowinski said, “especially because adding weight to a helmet and making it larger can make things more dangerous. I don’t think that’s borne out with the research. The benefits, though, aren’t entirely clear.

“I don't think the data is strong enough today that I'd recommend my son wear the Guardian Cap. But I wouldn't be telling other kids they shouldn’t.”

NFL's use of the caps

The National Football League started requiring linemen to wear Guardian Caps in training camps and practices in 2022 and extended the mandate this past summer to all players except those who don’t get hit in practice, such as quarterbacks and some special teams players.

“The Guardian Cap has been a very important change for us as it has shown to reduce impact,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at the annual league meeting in March. “It has been very effective and has reduced concussions by 52%.”

The league has not released the study to support that conclusion, however. The NFL uses a model of Guardian Cap called the NXT that weighs 12.7 ounces, costs about $100 and is not available for sale to the general public. 

The caps are also now allowed in games, though only six players elected to wear them through week 2 of the season, according to the NFL. 

The NFL has covers for the Guardian Caps that show the team's logo and more closely resemble a traditional football helmet, unlike at the high school level. Proponents of the caps hope that if more NFL players wear them, such choices will trickle down.

“We look up to these guys and it’s like, ‘Look! They’re using them. Let’s try them out,’ ” Santoro said.

'A false sense of security'

Despite the feeling of safety the caps might provide, there are questions about their effectiveness and ability to reduce the risk of head injuries and concussions. Guardian Sports stops short of saying the product is intended to reduce concussions. Instead, it says the cap helps reduce the impact when helmets collide, which helps protect the player's brain and is intended to be one part of the safety strategy. But concussions are not limited to helmet-to-helmet contact and can happen in a variety of ways, such as when a player's head hits the ground or is hit by another player's knee or shoulder.

Pat Pizzarelli, the executive director of Nassau County scholastic sports, said there needs to be more evidence the caps help before schools start investing in them.

"I’d be the first to support the use of the Guardian Caps if there was proof," Pizzarelli said. "I would push for their use throughout the county if that was the case."

Experts agree that no helmet or helmet add-on can eliminate the risk of concussions and head injuries in football. The game has tried to mitigate those risks in recent years at the pro, college, high school and youth levels by emphasizing proper tackling technique that does not involve the head, adding "targeting" penalties for players who hit with the crown of the helmet, and using equipment that better protects players.

Matt McLees, a former coach at Carey High School and now the athletic director for the five high schools in the Sewanhaka district as well as the Section VIII football coordinator, is a Guardian Cap skeptic.

“We don’t use them in our district,” he said. “I don’t know that they have proven to reduce concussions ... I guess I would like to see some more data and see what exactly the numbers are regarding what it is or is not preventing.”

Instead of Guardian Caps, McLees’ district invested in new JAX-brand tackling dummies that help train players to keep their heads away from contact.

“That’s been the safety thing we’ve focused most on and not so much on the headcovers,” he said. “The way in which we’re practicing and limiting contact, I think that’s more important than putting something on the helmet and giving a kid a false sense of security.”

Independent testing

Researchers at the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab have been testing helmets since 2011 and publish a rating system based on a helmet’s ability to reduce the risk of concussion. Helmets equipped with sensors are hit in multiple places at various speeds to simulate the different forces of impact a football player would experience over the course of a season.

The lab, which is independently funded, tested the Guardian Caps last fall by using its helmet testing protocol to determine if the caps can help reduce impact and the risk of concussion. The caps used in the NFL and the ones used at the high school level were attached to two different helmets — the Riddell SpeedFlex and the Schutt F7. In each case, the testing showed the Guardian Caps reduced the linear and acceleration impact.

“The data shows that they can be helpful,” said Barry Miller, the director of business and outreach development for the lab. “It's not going to be drastic. It's the helmet itself that does most of the work ... But more padding is generally better, right? That's kind of the takeaway. And we don't have any evidence that suggests that wearing [a cap] would be detrimental in any form.”

Nowinski cautions that while lab studies using sensors might show a reduction in impact, the caps could be having other effects that require more extensive research.

“We’re not sure if it’s the cap that’s helping reduce concussions,” Nowinski said, “or if players are hitting less because now they’re wearing a giant ‘Don’t hit me in the head' pad on their helmets.”

Miller Place coach Adam St. Nicholas agrees the presence of the caps is a reminder to players to avoid hits to the head.

“Putting the cap on the player gives them a deeper awareness to keep their head out of the tackle,” St. Nicholas said. “It emphasizes that we are trying to protect the head, so let’s tackle and block the right way. And when that contact does happen with the Guardian Cap on, it’s safer.”

“You know you have it on and why you have it on,” Kiernan said, “so you avoid helmet-to-helmet contact. If it keeps guys healthy and on the field, I’m all for wearing them all the time.”

Hanson said hard-shell helmet technology hasn’t changed much since the 1960s, and that’s part of the reason the caps are gaining in popularity.

“They reduce that linear impact when two helmets collide,” Hanson said, “and then they're also decoupled from the helmet, so it allows the impact to move around the exterior shell of the helmet, rather than going directly into the athlete's brain.”

Tom Combs, the executive director of Suffolk County scholastic sports, said he has received positive feedback on the use of the caps.

“I’ve spoken with a couple of doctors recently,” Combs said, “and they all said it’s a little bit safer with [the caps] on. So why not?”

‘We're being proactive’

Matt Pevsner's parents, Bryan and Jennifer Pevsner, said their son wanted to keep playing football after suffering two concussions.

"He had two concussions in the eighth grade, and if there's one more, he's done playing football," Jennifer Pevsner said. "We felt [the Guardian Cap] was a good measure to try and prevent another one. He loves football and we want him to play, so we're being proactive."

Bryan Pevsner coached youth football for 12 years and said he was familiar with the safety guidelines and the quality of youth football helmets.

"After doing the research, there was nothing else on the market that he could use to help protect himself and his head,” Bryan Pevsner said. “We talked to the district, and they approved the use of it. The district's been fantastic about it and really cooperative and supportive.

"Kids are still growing and developing, and they should mandate the Guardian Caps," Pevsner said. "They should be wearing them, especially the younger players that don't have the experience with tackling appropriately."

Jennifer Golding has two sons playing football in the Miller Place program and helped lead a fundraising effort this summer to outfit every player from middle school through varsity with a Guardian Cap this fall.

“As a football parent you are constantly worrying that your kid is going to get hurt,” she said. “This makes me a little bit relieved. A lot relieved, I should say. I don’t know a parent who wouldn’t want their kid to be in this cap and have that little added layer of protection.”

Herricks coach Tom Graef had his varsity team wear them in practices last season. This year, the entire program from middle school up is outfitted with Guardian Caps purchased by the booster club.

“We immediately saw a decrease in players saying, ‘Ow, my head hurts,’ and things like that,” Graef said. “It was tremendous, safety-wise.”

Herricks junior lineman Jason Thevarajah, in his second season wearing a Guardian Cap for practice, said: “Throughout the year you notice that your head hurts less in practice, you feel better coming out of practices, and the hits don’t feel as hard.”

At Westhampton High School, coach Bryan Schaumloffel has had his players wearing the caps in practices since 2019. He said his son, Erich, wore it all four of the seasons he played high school football there and then went on to play at Plymouth State last season, where they did not.

“One of the first things he said when he came back from college was, ‘I wish I had my Guardian Cap,’ ” Schaumloffel said. “Any time you have a collision, anything that softens that collision is a good thing. I’m sold on them. If you ask my son, as someone who played with it for four years, he liked having the Guardian Cap.”

Is it worth it?

Cost is a very real part of the equation for many teams, districts and parents. Hanson, the COO of Guardian Sports, said the company tries to work with programs that can’t come up with those kinds of funds, and there are various grant programs that provide money to outfit youth and scholastic teams as well.

“I ended up using a promo code on the internet and got 20 of them for about $1,300,” Longwood coach Sean Kluber said of his recent purchase with money raised by his team’s booster club. “They can be a little pricey, so we started with 20. We anticipate buying 20 more this offseason and we can then fit almost the entire team in them.”

Combs said he knows of very few schools that pick up the cost, which leaves parents and booster clubs to foot the bill.

“They’re not cheap, but it was worth it,” Half Hollow Hills West coach Gerald Filardi said of outfitting his team through his booster club as well. “Hopefully, eventually the school puts in and everybody gets a budget for it. I think that would be a great thing if it became streamlined through Section XI or New York State and they increase the budget for something like that."

Miller Place’s parent associations bought some Guardian Caps last year, but with only 20 on hand, St. Nicholas said it was hard to decide who got to wear them and who did not. Would they go to the linemen, who were more prone to head contact? Players with concussion histories?

“I didn’t like having to make that decision at all,” St. Nicholas said.

He brought his concerns to the team’s Touchdown Club this past summer. Golding, Kristin Murphy and Nena Thompson, all mothers of players there, launched a fundraiser that within 24 hours collected enough from the community to purchase 100 more caps.

“We were floored by the incredible outpouring of support,” Golding said. “Talk about moms getting stuff done.”

Westhampton found money in the budget to purchase them for the program before they were commonplace. Given their average five-year life span, the school will likely be buying more soon.

Amityville athletic director Evan Farkas bought them for his teams last year.

“I don’t think it was ever really a question for the district [to cover the costs],” Farkas said. “When it comes to safety, I think it’s our obligation to make sure we are providing them with the safest equipment."

With Michael Anderson, Michael Sicoli and Andy Slawson